CC™ VideoScope
Saturday
Egyptian lawyer sues Netflix for depicting Cleopatra as Black woman
CC™ Entertainment News
By Adele James
An Egyptian lawyer has taken legal action against the popular streaming platform, Netflix. The lawyer filed a case with the Public Prosecutor calling for the closure of the platform after the release of the trailer for the upcoming movie, "Queen Cleopatra."
The film depicts the Greek historical figure as a black-skinned woman, a portrayal that has caused controversy and sparked outrage in Egypt.
The lawyer argues that the depiction is historically inaccurate and offensive to the Egyptian people.
According to Egypt Independent, Mahmoud al-Semary demanded that all legal measures be taken against those responsible for the documentary and the management of the streaming platform for its participation in “this crime.”
The complaint submitted against the streaming platform alleged that "most of what Netflix platform displays contradicts Islamic and societal values and principles, especially Egyptian ones.", Greek city times reported.
The case said that the documentary promotes Afrocentrism that is widely spread on social media, which have slogans and writings aimed at distorting and obliterating the Egyptian identity.
The complaint continued addressing Public Prosecution: "In order to preserve the Egyptian national and cultural identity among Egyptians all over the world… we ask and seek you to take the necessary legal measures against this platform."
It demanded stopping broadcasts showing all works aimed at obliterating and distorting the Egyptian identity, through films aimed at falsifying and distorting history in Egypt.
Thursday
T-Mobile to make major changes to its wireless plans on April 20th
CC™ Mobility Watch
By Alan Friedman
T-Mobile announced this week that it will announce its next Un-carrier move on Thursday, April 20th. The news will be released at 9 am PDT/Noon EDT. In addition, a promotional image shared by T-Mobile has the phrase "Let's Go" right in the middle which dovetails with the rumored new "Go5G" branding for T-Mobile's wireless plans.
T-Mobile is about to shake up its wireless plans according to The Mobile Report. The latter cites multiple sources who claim that the nation's second-largest wireless provider is going to rebrand its top wireless plans under the "Go5G" name. Those subscribed to the current Magenta plans (Magenta Max, Magenta) will be allowed to keep their current plans. The "Go5G" plan will be the basic plan, similar to the Magenta plan. "Go5G" Plus will match Magenta Max.
The report adds that T-Mobile will also be using the "Go5G" name for its enterprise-related Business and Business Plus plans. Also expected are "Go5G" Military and "Go5G" First Responder plans.
While it isn't known what additional features the new plans might have, one source mentioned by The Mobile Report suggests that there might be more international calling options. Another possibility is that the new plans might not include taxes and fees. As for the pricing of the new plans, when T-Mobile went from its ONE branding to Magenta, prices were the same before and after the change. While that could be the case here, we will have to wait for an official announcement to know for sure.
Besides the "Go5G" plans, the sources have apparently mentioned a plan called Essentials Savings which might be a less-loaded discounted plan similar to the carrier's current Essentials plan. The report claims that there is a company-wide meeting scheduled for this coming Sunday, April 23rd which is when the new branding and plans could be announced. T-Mobile has broken big stories on Sunday before. On April 29th, 2018, a Sunday, T-Mobile announced that it was going to acquire Sprint.
T-Mobile is supposed to announce its first-quarter results on April 27th and analysts expect it to lead the industry in one of the most important industry metrics, net new postpaid phone customers. Additionally, T-Mobile dominated the latest data speed report released by Ookla for the first quarter.
PHONE ARENA
Wednesday
Tuesday
Ooni of Ife, Kenyan president meet to discuss business and peace initiatives
CC™ Global News
By Deji Komolafe
Arole Oduduwa, Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II, has recently visited Kenyan President, His Excellency, William Ruto on a state visit to discuss his Global Peace Agenda, unification of African people and Ojaja Pan-African Business Initiatives, which is currently extending to global space.
Ooni commended Ruto for his leadership qualities in making Kenya a leading stable democracy in Africa and also expressed his confidence in the president’s capacity to deliver monumental dividends of democracy to the people of Kenya.
“Africa is the most appealing continent, with immense natural fortune and untapped human capital that are altering the global workforce, trade, and investment. I am thankful for the president’s demonstration of his commitment to push for the inclusion of traditional institutions as enablers of good governance in Africa as I unveiled the Ooni Ojaja Pan-Africa Business and Investment Initiative with a large contingent of entrepreneurs across Africa. It is clear that we must consciously expand our economic engagement with unprecedented access to markets between our two countries. Nigeria needs Kenya, and Kenya needs Nigeria. Our ambition is to develop the most ambitious ties that will propel us to sell goods and services more easily across borders while our children can pursue opportunities across Africa without barriers of immigration and unfriendly movement policies.
“The borderless African continent is an unexploited asset that is critical to unlocking the economic potential of African countries. The vision of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is one of the flagships for the continent’s shared wealth and economic boom. It is a game changer that can provide a tariff-free framework that should have been in existence since 1957 when Ghana became the first African country to achieve independence from colonial rule. It is time to build the “Africa that We Want,” not as a slogan, but as an epic movement that restores Africa’s honour, pride, and reverence, from aid to trade,” he said.
Receiving His Imperial Majesty and his entourage at the Kenyan Government House in Nairobi, President Ruto lauded Ooni’s quest to ensure Africa grows in peace and unity by using his position to bridge the gap between a traditional, government institutions and the people.
Ruto said that Kenya is willing to support the Ooni’s Initiatives and strengthen partnerships due to the King’s investment in human development and business success.
“Your Majesty, I sincerely welcome you and your team on behalf of the government and good people of Kenya. We have been told of how you have consistently used your throne to work for peace and prosperity of our continent and the world at large, you are indeed a very unique Pan-African king of our time. This is what kings should be doing.
“Kenyans and Nigerians are partners in progress for the development of Africa. The two countries have enjoyed good diplomatic ties together and this visit and investment mission in Kenya will surely further strengthen the existing cordiality between our two countries.”
“Kenya is opening for big enterprises, come and set up businesses here and I can assure you and members of your Ojaja Pan-African Business Initiatives some of whom are already operating in some East African countries of the unflinching support of my government”, he said.
Monday
BREAKING: Results on INEC portal show Peter Obi, not Tinubu, won in Rivers State
CC™ Politico News
By Chinagorom Ugwu and Saviour Imukudo
The candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, won the 25 February presidential election in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, South-south Nigeria, according to results uploaded on the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV).
Mr Obi’s haul of votes in the area implies he, and not Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the presidential election in Rivers, contrary to the declaration made by INEC.
The result for Obio/Akpor council area, as declared by INEC, portrayed Mr Tinubu as scoring 80, 239 votes, with Mr Obi garnering 3,829 votes.
Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 368 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party got 161 votes, this newspaper had reported.
Mr Tinubu was later declared winner of the election. Atiku came second while Mr Obi came third.
But PREMIUM TIMES’ review of the results from various polling units of the 17 wards in Obio/Akpor LGA as uploaded on IReV revealed a sharp contrast with the result declared by INEC.
Given that Mr Tinubu was declared winner in Obio/Akpor, this newspaper’s review focused on the results of the votes scored by the APC and LP in the area
By our tally, the APC got 17, 158 votes while the LP amassed 73,311 votes.
Obio/Akpor Local Government Area has 1,211 polling units across its 17 wards.
PREMIUM TIMES could only review results from 1,116 polling units uploaded on the IReV as of 16 March, representing about 94.13 percent of the results from the council area.
However, results from some polling units were either blurred or improperly snapped and therefore illegible.
Results from about 95 polling units, representing about 5.87 per cent, were yet to be uploaded within the period under review.
There were no results in some polling units either because the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System malfunctioned or people did not come out to cast their votes, as observed at Ake Hostel UNIPORT Polling Unit in Choba Ward.
This newspaper computed the available and readable results from the 1,116 polling units uploaded so far on the IReV within the period of the review.
In some polling units in Obio/Akpor, PREMIUM TIMES found that some results were altered in favour of the APC, with the original scores mutilated.
The result from Rumuorluoji Open Space II polling unit in Oro-Igwe Ward, for instance, showed that the APC originally scored 17 but the number, ‘2’ was added to the figure to read ‘217.’
For the LP, 227 was recorded, but the number ‘2’ was erased and altered to read ‘027.’
At the column meant for recording the scores in words, there were evidence of adjustments to suit the changed figures.
In Rumuokoro Ward, it was noticed that in 34 polling units, results earlier written for the LP were erased and the figures swapped with that of the APC.
PREMIUM TIMES, nevertheless, tallied the figures as published by INEC, despite the obvious evidence of adjustments and mutilations. In other words, the figures were tallied as they appeared on result sheets, even when there was evidence that such figures were tampered with.
In some cases, the results for the National Assembly elections were uploaded in some polling units instead of the presidential election results.
A result from the Civic Centre Hall Polling Unit in Rumuigbo Ward, for instance, showed that a result from the House of Representatives election was uploaded in place of that of the presidential election.
PREMIUM TIMES also tallied results from Degema Local Government Area uploaded on the IReV, and the findings confirmed Mr Tinubu won in the council area, although the score was slightly lower than the one announced by INEC.
However, this newspaper could not tally the results from some polling units in the council area because they were illegible or not yet uploaded within the period under review.
Mr Obi was leading Mr Tinubu with over 23,000 votes by the time INEC announced the presidential election results in 21 of the 23 local government areas in the state.
The LP candidate polled 169,414 votes at the time, while Mr Tinubu scored 148,979 votes.
Mr Obi’s largest votes at the time came from Port Harcourt City Local Government Area where he scored 62,451 votes, while Atiku scored 7,203 votes, followed by Mr Tinubu, who scored 5,562 votes. Kwankwaso scored 301.
Results were still being expected then from two remaining local government areas – Obio/Akpor, where the State Governor, Nyesom Wike, hails from, and Degema.
With the results from Obio/Akpor coming in, and with INEC announcing that Mr Tinubu scored 80, 239 votes against Mr Obi’s 3,829 votes, the APC candidate was now in the lead and was eventually declared the winner of the presidential election in Rivers State.
Atiku scored 368 votes in Obio/Akpor, while Mr Kwankwaso scored 161 votes.
In Degema Local Government Area, Mr Tinubu scored 2,375 votes, while Mr Obi scored 2,212 votes. Atiku scored 3,108 votes, while Mr Kwankwaso scored 44 votes.
Mr Tinubu polled 231,591 votes in Rivers State as against Mr Obi’s 175,071 votes, according to INEC.
Atiku scored 88,468, while Mr Kwankwaso clinched 1,322 votes.
The collation officer for the presidential election in Rivers had adjourned the collation of results at some point over alleged threat to his life by some supporters of a political party.
There were reports of attacks and suppression of voters in the state.
Governor Wike, who is a member of the PDP, led other PDP governors to rebel against the national leadership of the party and its presidential candidate, Atiku, following disagreement over which of the north or the south should produce President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor.
The Rivers governor had contested and lost in the PDP presidential primary.
He then supported the APC candidate, Mr Tinubu in the presidential election, saying since Mr Buhari is from the north, the next president of Nigeria, for the sake of fairness, should come from the south.
Mr Obi, like Mr Tinubu, is from the south of Nigeria.
PREMIUM TIMES
Wednesday
Holy Week attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria leave nearly 100 dead
By Douglas Burton
At least 94 people reportedly have died in a series of deadly attacks on Christian communities throughout Holy Week in Benue state in north-central Nigeria, an ominous sign of escalating violence blamed on Muslim militias in the country’s Middle Belt region.
On April 2, armed men reportedly stormed a Palm Sunday service at a Pentecostal church in Akenawe-Tswarev in Logo county, Benue state, killing a young boy and kidnapping the pastor and other worshippers.
Three days later, on April 5, gunmen killed at least 50 people in the village of Umogidi, located in Utokpo county, a Catholic stronghold in western Benue, the Associated Press reported.
More recently, on the night of Good Friday, dozens were killed when Muslim gunmen raided an elementary school building in the village of Ngban that serves as a shelter for about 100 displaced Christian farmers and their families.
The April 7 attack left 43 people dead and more than 40 injured, according to Father Remigius Ihyula, who heads the Benue branch of the Justice, Development, and Peace Commission (JDPC), a Nigerian Catholic relief organization.
Hours before the attack, Benue’s outgoing governor, Samuel Ortom, speaking in Otukpo, warned residents to remain vigilant and criticized what he sees as a slow response on the part of police and army units to respond to his requests for help.
Ortom had demanded for four years that federal laws be changed to allow citizens to buy firearms for self-defense, without success.
A JDPC relief worker who asked to remain anonymous told CNA she arrived the next morning to care for survivors and spoke to police officers manning the checkpoint near the school.
“Some of the survivors told me that police had fought the attackers and possibly killed some of them, but the marauding band retrieved their dead on their way out of the school compound, and the police told me the same,” she said.
“I doubt that the survivors of the attack on the primary school could go to church on Easter Sunday, as they need medicine and trauma counseling,” Father Ihyula told CNA.
While visiting with survivors of the April 7 attack in Ngban, Ortom said at least 134 people were killed in attacks in Benue over five days. Included in that tally is an April 3 raid in Apa that left 47 dead, according to a report by ThisDaylive.com, a Nigerian news outlet. It was not immediately clear on Monday whether Christians were the targets in that attack.
Benue state has an estimated 2 million displaced persons who cannot live on their traditional farm lands for fear of being killed. Some farmers venture back to cultivate their fields during the day and retreat to displaced person camps at night.
Tuesday
Monday
Tinubu’s Falsified Age and Certificate: A Typical Nigerian Corrupt System
CC™ Politico News
Since 1999, only few men have best ridden Nigeria’s political landscape like a colossus as the current National Leader of the All Progressives Congress. As the ultimate kingmaker, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has anointed governors and frustrated the ambitions of those who would not kowtow to his political vision. As he concluded the celebrations for his alleged 69th birthday, it has been revealed that like many other Nigerian citizens who engage in this despicable act, the political juggernaut Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has falsified his age.
The 70th birthday anniversary of the national leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has prompted populist skepticism and questions over the real age of the renowned politician and former Governor of Lagos State. Several Nigerians took to their social media platforms to express their doubts over the age of the politician who celebrated 70 years in March 2022. The people raised questions of integrity in relation to claims of age or pretenses of celebrating his false age.
Sturdy analysis carried out by Africa Daily News, New York and some other reputable media companies have observed that the first wife of Tinubu died at the age of 74 years, while the first son died at 43 years, yet, Tinubu is marking his 70th birthday in 2022. More strong pieces of evidence pointed out that the renowned politician couldn’t be the age he is claiming, being 24 years older than his son and many years younger than the first wife. This is why serious projections have put his age at somewhere between 85 to 90.
This would not be the first time Asiwaju Bola Tinubu would be engaging in blatant fraudulent maneuvers to suit his insatiable hunger for power and political dominance in Nigeria. He was once slammed with an allegation that he forged a certificate for an International school. In 1999, one Dr. Waliu Balogun had written a petition against Tinubu that he did not attend the University of Chicago as indicated in his INEC form 001 filled when he contested the Lagos State governorship poll and that he also lied in the affidavit he attached to the INEC form, in which he declared that he lost his university degree certificate while he was in exile between 1994 and 1998.
Balogun’s litany of complaints included accusations that Tinubu’s claim of attending Government College, Ibadan, was false; and that he lied in the INEC form about his age – that he was born in 1952 as against the 1954 he filled in the documents at the University of Chicago. Tinubu was also accused of not participating in the compulsory one-year NYSC exercise.
Generating a lot of furor, Tinubu was forced to present the original copy of his certificate while he dismissed the allegations as ‘baseless, wicked and unfortunate.’ Notwithstanding, that year, a firebrand lawyer and human rights activist, Gani Fawehinmi, went to court to compel the Inspector General of Police to investigate Tinubu. Fawehinmi did not live long enough to finish the lawsuit. In 2013, however, one Dr. Dominic Adegbola filed an unsuccessful application seeking to reopen the suit.
This goes a long way to show how desperate Nigerian leaders and politicians are when it comes to clinching and retaining power. And this phenomenon of falsification of age, documents and other credentials are not limited to just the politicians alone. It is also rampant amongst Nigerian citizens in every level, status or pedigree. It is so common amongst Nigerians that two Nigerians out of three are either actively engaging in age, document falsification or they have done it in the past.
There are numerous reasons why Nigerians would chose to falsify their age and documents, the most common reasons for these are to avoid marriage stigmatization (especially among the females in Nigeria), they also do it at their workplaces to give them an added advantage over a position they are vying for or to retain a position that they are already occupying. Many Nigerian Tertiary institution students also engage in age falsification to aid them to get better advantages in the National Youth Service scheme. Time and time again, a few scapegoats are caught but this does not deter some other students from engaging in it.
Another reason which is not limited to Nigerians alone is in the sports sector. Age fraud in sports is age fabrication or the use of false documentation to gain an advantage over opponents. In football, it is common amongst players belonging to nations where records are not easily verifiable. The media often refer to the player with false documentation as an ‘age-cheat’. There are several reasons why players choose to use false documentation. European scouts are looking for young talented players from poorer countries to sign for a European club.
The players know that there is a lesser chance of being signed if they are, for example, 23 years old as opposed to 17 years old as there would be less time for the club to develop the player. Age fabrication also allows an older player to enter in youth competitions and it attracts some other obvious benefits like salary increment and longer transfer durations. Although Nigerian sportsmen and women are not notorious for age fabrication, a few never do wells are usually caught and sampled out for punishment to serve as a deterrent to others who plan to engage in age or document fabrication.
Age or document falsification is a huge crime that should always be investigated and ironed out. It is completely unfortunate that the Nigerian Government and other security forces would rather choose to turn a blind eye to this fast-growing menace than deal with it decisively. They avoid it because many of them who hold powerful positions are all guilty of the same offense.
Tinubu is corruption and dishonesty personified and his lack of even an iota of moral compass typifies the current breed of scavengers and marauders, masquerading as politicians in the Nigerian political landscape.
Sunday
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