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| WPA POOL/GETTY IMAGES |
Friday
British Royal family refused to employ people from racial and ethnic minorities
Thursday
Wednesday
Tuesday
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Sunday
Buhari’s legacy of terror and bloodshed as Fulani Herdsmen terrorize communities in Plateau State
CC™ ViewPoint
Global News Desk
Intercommunal conflict has killed hundreds of people in recent years in Nigeria’s ethnically and religiously diverse Middle Belt region.
The death toll from fighting between farmers and herders in Nigeria’s north-central state of Plateau has risen above 100 with locals searching in the bush for more bodies, residents and local authorities say.
Gunmen stormed villages and burned several houses in the Mangu area on Tuesday with at least 20 people initially estimated to have died, mostly women and children.
The violence was in reprisal for farmers killing a herder and his cattle who had encroached on their land last month, local herder Bello Yahaya said on Friday.
Mangu local government chairman Minista Daniel Daput said a mass burial had been conducted for about 50 people. Residents said another 50 were to be buried on Friday and they were looking for more missing people in the surrounding bush.
Plateau is one of several ethnically and religiously diverse hinterland states known as Nigeria’s Middle Belt, where intercommunal conflict has killed hundreds of people in recent years.
The violence is often painted as an ethno-religious conflict between nomadic Muslim herders – mostly ethnic Fulani – and mainly Christian Indigenous farmers. However, experts say climate change and expanding agriculture have also exacerbated the conflict.
Makut Simon Macham, a spokesperson for Plateau’s governor, said authorities were assessing the situation and would prosecute suspects, but he could not give casualty numbers.
REUTERS
Saturday
Fela Died Of Poison From Nigerian Government, Not AIDS - Dede Mabiaku
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| Sani Abacha (L) |
CC™ ViewPoint
By Wale Adedayo
Dede Mabiaku, a close friend of the late Nigerian Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, has stated that the Afrobeats icon died from a lethal injection by the Nigerian Government, and not from HIV/AIDS as had been previously speculated.
Mabiaku said Fela had told him and his (Fela’s) youngest son, Seun Kuti, about his suspicions that he had been injected with “something” while in the custody of the National Drug and Law Enforcement Agency, during the draconian reign of the then military dictator, General Sani Abacha.
Mabiaku, a protégée of the late musician, says he is concerned that history might repeat itself with the continued detention of Fela’s son, Seun Kuti, by the Buhari administration.
He stated, “they injected him (Fela) while he was in their custody, and why no one has raised this matter since then is surprising to me.
“Fela never knew what they injected him with. He just felt something and asked us whether we’ve seen him sleep face-down before and we said no. And he asked us how come it happened, showing us his side and saying he feels like he was injected with something.
“We need to be real with ourselves and ask questions when things don’t seem right. The Nigerian government is an oppressive one. So many people have died mysteriously while or after having being in custody of this wicked government. We must never forget and keep fighting.”
Friday
Editorial Flashback: It's an e-mail scam, not a "Nigerian scam"....
Imagine my surprise when I turned to the consumer page of the Attorney General of the State of Washington to find that a whole people, in this case citizens of Nigeria, had been painted with a wide brush (see former website content below in italics). Regarding the latter, I am talking about the much talked about e-mail scams or advance fee fraud, many believe originated from that West African nation.
"E-mail Scams - Advance fee and counterfeit check/Nigerian scams: If you suffered a financial loss you can file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov"
To better understand this issue, it will be prudent to give a brief overview of the most populous country on the African continent, a nation that has disbursed so much good to much of humanity, with some bad mixed in (show me a perfect country or people).
Nigeria gained its independence from Britain on October 1st, 1960. Since then, the country has experienced a civil war (that lasted for three years 1967-1970 and killed 1 million of its citizens) while also enjoying a long spell of economic prosperity and boom from the 70s to the late-80s (much from oil and other natural resources she has been blessed with).
Lately, beginning in the 1990s, the country's infrastructure, image and over-all national reputation has taking a beating, mainly as a result of defective leadership laced with unbecoming greed and avarice.
The general climate of corruption (not quite different from what you would find in most countries but quite overt in Nigeria) has led to an expected societal breakdown, where law, order and common decency became an exception and not the norm.
For all of its struggles with corruption and the systematic destruction of its storied institutions and culture, much of this by its own military, with the acquiescence of the West (the latter mostly concerned with taking its resources by any means), the country has re-set itself back on course, with democratic elections in 1999 and has never looked back since.
The descent into "white collar crime" with the e-mail scams and other forms of criminal activity (by a very marginal minority) does NOT define the nature and character of Nigerians (over 200 million people), with many Nigerians contributing as physicians, scientists, technology experts and business executives in much of the world, particularly Africa, Europe and the United States (with a well established immigrant population in the Puget Sound as well).
While the e-mail/advance fee scam has generally been portrayed as a "Nigerian Scam", recent investigations by the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) (working in conjunction with the FBI and Interpol) have shown that most of these crimes (e-mail/advance fee scams) have actually been committed by citizens of other West African countries, namely Ghana, the Sierra Leone and Liberia (due to the wars and extreme poverty in the latter two).
The interesting spin to the preceding information is that America's next door neighbor, Canada, has become a notorious breeding ground as well for a large proportion of these e-mail and other transactional scams. Witness the Canadian "lottery winner" e-mails as well as the offer to send you a "cashiers check" when you try to sell your car on Craigslist.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), a body recently set up by Nigeria's democratically elected government, has also been very aggressive in pursuing the perpetrators of ALL financial crimes, within the Nigerian state.
While it is true that the Nigerian government "needs to do more" to ensure that this menace is curtailed (at least within its borders), one can say that the US government also needs to do more, by advising its citizens not to reply to e-mail solicitations to receive money from "relatives", they never had in Nigeria or anywhere else in the first place.
The advance fee fraud and e-mail scam developed a life of its own by the default of enablement. The greed and avarice in the United States (particularly on Wall Street) is there for all to see, but I am yet to see any Attorney General websites or newspapers refer to those as "American scam" or even worse still, label the scam on Wall Street with an ethnic delineation.
The advance fee fraud and e-mail scam developed a life of its own by the default of enablement. The greed and avarice in the United States (particularly on Wall Street) is there for all to see, but I am yet to see any Attorney General websites or newspapers refer to those as "American scam" or even worse still, label the scam on Wall Street with an ethnic delineation.
I am grateful to the deputy Chief-of-Staff of the Washington AG at the time for heeding my call and that of other well-meaning and hardworking Nigerians to remove the "Nigerian" label on this disgraceful activity.
One would hope that the likes of Sean Robinson (Staff Writer at the Tacoma News Tribune) might also learn something and understand that much like the criminals on Wall Street and those on the corners of the worst neighborhoods of Tacoma and indeed America who murder (serial killers et al), rape, pillage, molest and commit countless heinous crimes, are not branded with an American or other ethnic-American brush, it would be fool-hardy to do the same to others.
One would hope that the likes of Sean Robinson (Staff Writer at the Tacoma News Tribune) might also learn something and understand that much like the criminals on Wall Street and those on the corners of the worst neighborhoods of Tacoma and indeed America who murder (serial killers et al), rape, pillage, molest and commit countless heinous crimes, are not branded with an American or other ethnic-American brush, it would be fool-hardy to do the same to others.
Thursday
DNA study shows many African-Americans have Nigerian ancestry
During the period of the transatlantic slave trade, more than 12.5 million enslaved persons were shipped from Africa to the Americas with about 3.5 million of them from Nigeria.
Today there are communities of people with Nigerian ancestry mostly in Brazil, Cuba, and Jamaica who have retained some of their ancestral beliefs and traditions.
In the largest DNA study of people of African ancestry in the Americas, researchers found an overrepresentation of Nigerian genetic ancestry in the United States and Latin America compared to the proportion of enslaved people shipped to these places from regions within modern day Nigeria.
While the finds from the genetic study are largely supported by established narratives and historic records of the transatlantic slave trade, there were also inconsistencies.
The researchers put forward a new narrative explaining the variations in African ancestry in the Americas and how these variations were shaped by the transatlantic and a later intra-America slave trade whose impact was only recently understood.
The study which involved the DNA of 50,281 people of African descent in the United States, Latin America and western Europe was carried out by the consumer genetics company, 23andMe.
The genetic data was analyzed against historical records of over 36,000 transatlantic slave trade voyages that happened between 1492 and the early 19th century.
The overrepresentation of Nigeria ancestry is said to be a result of intra-American slave trade between the British Caribbean and mainland Americas.
Previous genetic studies have shown that African Americans in the US have more African ancestry from populations that lived near present-day Nigeria than from populations that lived elsewhere in Atlantic Africa (Western and west central Africa). In agreement, it was shown in this study Nigerian as the most common ancestry within the US, the French Caribbean, and the British Caribbean.
This is despite, nearly half of the slaves who landed in the United States coming from Senegambia (Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal) and West-Central Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola), a considerable number of the remaining half had their origins in Ghana as well as Ivory Coast.
The overrepresentation of Nigeria ancestry reported was found to be a result of the later intra-American slave trade between the British Caribbean and the mainland Americas.
The intra-American trade which was an inter-colonial trade involving over 11,000 slave voyages within the Americas stretched as far as Boston to Buenos Aires and also Atlantic and the Pacific littorals.
Intra-American trade records show that while the transatlantic voyages were going on, slave traders transferred nearly 500,000 slaves throughout the Americas with most intra-American voyages originating in the Caribbean.
Though the British outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and started intercepting slave ships, the intra-American slave trade continued.
The intra-American slave trade voyages on record sailed until the 1840s as there the slave trade continued in the US and between Spanish Caribbean colonies.
The researchers also reported Senegambia underrepresentation in the Americas such as in northern South America and Central America despite being the source of nearly half of the enslaved persons who landed at ports in the areas.
This underrepresentation was linked to the fact that Senegambia is one of the first African regions from which large numbers of people were enslaved in the Americas.
It was presumed to have resulted in reduced African ancestry in the population. A presumed high mortality rate in the Americas amongst enslaved persons from Senegambia was also given a possible reason.
Also in the study, the United States and the British Caribbean were found to have the highest African ancestry in the Americas. Previous genetic studies have also reported a lower proportion of Latin Americans with African roots compared to the proportion of African Americans in the United States.
This is despite historical records shows that over two-third of enslaved people who arrived in the Americas landed in Latin America with less than 5% landing in mainland North America.
This low representation was presumed to also be due to high mortality among enslaved people in Latin America and a high rate of intermarriage between them and native Americans resulting in reduced African ancestry in the population.
*This article was first published in Quartz Africa
Wednesday
5 Traits That Will Instantly Point to Someone With Bad Leadership Skills
BY MARCEL SCHWANTES, FOUNDER AND CHIEF HUMAN OFFICER, LEADERSHIP FROM THE CORE@MARCELSCHWANTES
Leadership broken down into its most basic and practical form can be defined as meeting the needs of people and developing them to their fullest potential.
When employees don't develop and have their needs met to do their jobs well, they experience low morale, they stop caring, and they stop trying.
To reverse the effects of bad leadership, when the rubber meets the road, these are five of the most common bad leadership behaviors I've encountered as an executive coach over the years.
1. Not recognizing people for doing good work.
Gallup has surveyed literally millions of employees worldwide and found that people who receive regular recognition and praise increase their individual productivity, increase engagement, and are more likely to stay with their organization. Additionally, they receive higher loyalty and satisfaction scores from customers and have better safety records and fewer accidents on the job.
2. Disrespecting employees.
In a 2020 poll conducted by ResumeLab on what makes someone a bad leader, it was found that an alarming 72 percent of the surveyed population was treated in a rude or disrespectful manner by a boss. Additionally, nearly 70 percent of respondents were criticized in front of their peers, and 83 percent of them felt bad about it. Finally, and perhaps the worst case of all, an eye-popping 42 percent of bad leaders blamed others for their failures, which 84 percent of employees felt is unfair.
3. Failure to communicate effectively.
In my work coaching leaders, communication issues are common. Too much of it, not enough of it, wrong messages being sent. Whatever form it comes in, poor communication can affect work morale, disengage your employees, and dissatisfy your customers. Whatever the case, one thing should be crystal clear: Communication, whether interpersonal or organizational, is a necessity for success.
4. Lacking integrity.
When questionable decisions for financial gain or personal benefit are made, employees know. And if they know, you've already lost the battle for respect. But if you lead by example and show integrity in your decision-making, it says a lot about you -- the leader. Who you are as a person in relation to others will ultimately determine your level of success.
5. Failure to give ongoing feedback as part of the manager-employee relationship.
Far too often, the typical annual performance review and its process don't result in positive feedback. Generally, in this process, managers will bank up views and perspectives until review time, dumping them all at once on the employee, thus leaving them dazed and confused, overwhelmed, and in some cases irritated.
If we want our employees to grow, why are we waiting an entire year to offer them help? Feedback is about asking and receiving useful advice and insights on a continuous journey toward shared goals. It's about building trusting relationships and knowing that help is there.
When we get it right, feedback lifts people up, helps them understand their strengths, and shows them pathways to achieve the next step in their career progression.
Tuesday
Monday
FLASHBACK: WHAT DO YOU WANT ON YOUR TOMBSTONE?
"We must always find a way to get into GOOD TROUBLE; speak against all evils, and do the right thing at all times!" - John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020).
John Lewis believed in the courage of his convictions. He followed his mind and he conquered his fear and left a great legacy worthy of emulation. - Yahaya Balogun.
"It's time to prod our minds and look at ourselves in the mirror; ask ourselves the questions: are we going to be part of the problems, or are we going to be part of the solutions? History will judge our decision, action, and inaction" - Yahaya Balogun.
In 1963, John Lewis was, at age 23, the youngest person set to speak at the March on Washington. John Lewis gave a resounding speech of his life during the protest for civil rights in the United States of America. John Lewis was a man of peace, and a conscience of the US Congress and the world. Historically, no one has under any circumstances, stop an idea whose time has come. There's always a reward for every action or inaction. John Lewis was arrested more than 40 times during the civil rights movement in the US. He was brutalized, jailed, and dehumanized. But John Lewis remained steadfast, and never get discouraged. The historic movement he participated in paved the way for the recognition of the dignity of African-Americans.
It seems time has come to systematically put an end to racial profiling and systemic racism in the United States of America. Thanks to the modern well-informed, articulate, and decent American millennials. The American millennials are morally reading American history in congenial ways to turn surreptitious hate to love in the United States. John Lewis was a moral fiber and a quintessential fine man. John Lewis was an epitome of moral values and principles. Values are principles, standards, or qualities by which we live our lives; our values shape the person we become, and our actions to our neighbors and humanity reflect those values. This is the definition of John Lewis in the conscience of his contemporaries in the US Congress.
John Lewis was a liberated man. A liberated man is free, fair-minded, fearless, and humanistic. A liberated mind is not concerned by the noises emanating from the cyborg market, or enemies' territory! A liberated soul is mindful of his association and carefully chooses his friends and acquaintances. He is conscious and informed of what he does to other people. All his actions are from the repository of good ideas for man's humanity to man. A liberated man is a complete man with mindfulness, emulative values, consistency, and love.
The mind of a good man is concerned about how to enlivening and stimulating the souls of his neighbors and adversaries alike for their success and happiness altogether. A man with a purposeful mind is focused and anticipatory about the results of the good he has invested in himself and other people. The ROI-return on investment of the good a good man has done to fellow human beings is the undiluted joy in his heart. The integrity of man is known when his character comes to fore. He keeps true and never gets ashamed of doing what's right or best for him and humanity. The value of a liberated man defines him and shapes the kind of person he becomes in life and after that. A liberated mind has zero-tolerance for pretense, hatred, idiocy, and other negative nuances of life. He pays close attention to discern the evil-minds around. He is not perfect, but his fallibility makes him reasonable and humble when he realizes his mistakes or wrongdoings.
A man with a liberated mind fights fearlessly with no opportunistic expectations and grandstanding. His encumbrance (burden) is his deafening silence in the face of oppression and tyranny. A complete man shares his beliefs, virtues, integrity, principles, and missions with unblemished vigor and robustness for the common good of all. A whole man doesn't mind the short-term consequences or rewards for his act of goodwill, but he's fixated on the imports of his deeds to benefit him and humanity.
On the other hand, a warped mind is a reservoir for uncanny men to deposit resentment, vices, hatred, and manipulations. One of the most significant damages unnatural man has done to society has been his refusal or nonchalant attitude to discover his value through mindfulness. Uncanny man is very narcissistic, jealous, opportunistic, mindless, and resentful of others. He is always in penchant rivalry or competition with others rather than with himself!
Every man has roommates (negative and positive minds). A resentful man listens continuously to his roommate's negative voice (i.e., the blistering spirit of hate and resentment). The sound of roommates is mutually complementary if they agree with each other. Uncanny man has no compliment or encouraging disposition towards the other man making progress. He is always striving for the unwinnable war of envy, and needless struggle with his midget mind to falsely outpace himself.
The completeness of a man is embedded or assembled in his subconscious mind. When a man rediscovers himself, he is liberated from the existential invasion of his mind by the selfish figures of the affluence, bad friends, and influential people around him. He is immune to antisocial behavior and societal vices. A liberated man is ensconced in constant self-evaluation and rediscovery. Through self-discovery, a liberated mind becomes a renewed man and predisposes to self-consciousness. A liberated man only believes in what will be engraved in his tomb after he kicks the bucket-greed, hedonism, resentment, extremism, opportunism, jealousy, bigotry, and hatred, not in his personage or lexicon. He always enjoys constant happiness, and the inner tranquility and peace flowing ceaselessly from the (subconscious) base of his mind.
Collectively, the common humanity that is in all of us should rise now. People must be morally engaged to join other people of goodwill to fight corruption, diseases, unhealthy competitions, hatreds, terrorism, religious and ethnic bigotry, jealousy, and deliberate divisiveness in our society. To bring peace to our environment is better than engaging in the negative nuances that can bring war, hatred, and disorderliness for our mutual destruction.
Generally, life is not fair and just, but it's beautiful to an only, thoughtful, and mindful mind. What divinely unites humanity (Love) is more than those defeatist nuances (racism, bigotry, hate, war, jealousy, false-religiosity, resentment, etc.) that divide the world. Your existential legacy should be your responsibility now before you expire. What man needs now is to rediscover himself through mindfulness; do self-talk; reinvest in moral armament to bring inner peace to himself, peace to his neighbors, and peace to the world.
John Lewis came; he saw, but he has left humanity an existential assignment of grace and decency. Our performance in the assessment will determine what people and posterity are going to jot down on our catacombs when we expire or kick the bucket.
May John Lewis's gentle and wonderful soul rest in perfect peace.
Sunday
Hongqi L5, Chinese car that costs twice the price of Rolls-Royce Phantom
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By Dapo Adegoke
Would you ever imagine that a Chinese vehicle would ever rival a Rolls-Royce or post a higher price tag? I know you don’t. But the reality on ground is that Hongqi L5 has proved us wrong.
The 780,000 dollar ultra-luxury Chinese car would give the Rolls-Royce Phantom a good fight anywhere, any day, in terms of luxury, performance, safety and even prestige.
The Hongqi L5 offers peak luxury and comfort, just like the Rolls-Royce but it is only a matter of time that the world would know that the Hongqi L5 is the new definition of luxury.
A little history about the Hongqi L5 would put things in the right perspective. Hongqi L5 is a luxury marque based in Changchun China. It started auto production in 1958 and holds the record as the first car independently produced in China. The auto company is China’s oldest car manufacturer.
While the Rolls-Royce Phantom cost about 460,000 dollar to acquire, this Chinese ultra luxury car cost about five million Chinese Yuan (780,000 dollars) to acquire, making it one of the most expensive cars in the world presently.
The truth is that the price tag did not come for nothing. The Hongqi L5 is loaded with array of features like never seen before and the ride comfort according to the manufacturers is out of this world.
A well crafted interior that is quiet and tasteful are some of the unique qualities of Hongqi L5. It comes in befitting black color.
From the side, the Hongqi L5 looks like a Rolls-Royce with its stretched wheelbase. The classic design can not be mistaken from any point and gives you an instant impression that the car is designed for kings and those who have arrived in the society.
The Hongqi L5 is powered with a 6.0-litre V12 engine which delivers power of 402 horsepower. Weighing almost 3.2 tons, this powerful car comes standard with All-Wheel Drive, AWD.
Saturday
Friday
Dealing with an incompetent and unethical lawyer
It is frustrating when you are dissatisfied with your lawyer or her work -- especially if you don't know what to do about it. Here are some strategies for dealing with common problems that arise during legal representation.
For starters, the distressingly common problem of non-communication doesn't have an easy solution. A lawyer who doesn't return phone calls or communicate with you for an extended period of time may be guilty of abandoning you -- a violation of attorneys' ethical obligations. But that's for a bar association to determine (if you register a complaint), and it won't do you much good in the short term.
If your lawyer doesn't seem to be working on your case, sending a polite but firm letter laying out your concerns should get your lawyer's attention. Don't threaten to file a malpractice lawsuit or complain to the bar association; such threats will probably make your lawyer angry and defensive, not attentive.
If your lawyer does not respond, or subsequent meetings or conversations are not fruitful, consider suggesting mediation to work out your communication problems if you still want this lawyer to represent you. A bad deskside manner doesn't mean that the lawyer isn't an excellent lawyer, and it can be difficult to find a new one in the middle of a case.
If you conclude that you simply can't work with your lawyer anymore, fire your lawyer and find someone new. You may also want to have a second lawyer evaluate your first lawyer's actions and advise you about paying (or refusing to pay) any bill you receive, filing a complaint with your state lawyer discipline agency, or suing the lawyer for malpractice.
The Lawyer Is Dishonest or Totally Incompetent
If you conclude that you simply can't work with your lawyer anymore, fire your lawyer and find someone new. You may also want to have a second lawyer evaluate your first lawyer's actions and advise you about paying (or refusing to pay) any bill you receive, filing a complaint with your state lawyer discipline agency, or suing the lawyer for malpractice.
The Lawyer Is Dishonest or Totally Incompetent
If your lawyer has actually stolen from you or acted with gross incompetence, the authorities in charge of disciplining lawyers in your state should show some interest.
File a complaint with your state's lawyer discipline agency
Every state has an agency responsible for licensing and disciplining lawyers. In most states, it's the bar association; in others, the state supreme court. The agency is most likely to take action if your lawyer has failed to pay you money that you won in a settlement or lawsuit, made some egregious error such as failing to show up in court, didn't do legal work you paid for, committed a crime, or has a drug or alcohol abuse problem.
Unfortunately, these state agencies are famous for moving at a slow pace, not pursuing complaints vigorously, and communicating poorly with people who file complaints. Still, it is important to report a legal skunk. Many agencies wait until they have several similar complaints about a particular attorney before taking action.
Getting compensated
State bar associations are primarily concerned with punishing lawyers (though rarely severely), not compensating clients. But all states except Maine, New Mexico, and Tennessee do have funds from which they may reimburse clients whose attorneys stole from them.
You're Concerned About the Lawyer's Work
It's often hard for a client to know whether or not a lawyer is doing a good job. But if you think your lawyer's ability leaves something to be desired, investigate -- before it's too late.
Communicate
If your lawyer doesn't seem to be working on your case, talk to your lawyer and explain your concerns.
Get your file
If you can't find out what has (and has not) been done, you need to get hold of your file. You can read it in your lawyer's office or ask your lawyer to send you copies of everything -- all correspondence and everything filed with the court or recorded with a government agency.
If you've already ended your relationship with the lawyer, you need your file pronto to make sure all deadlines are met, mistakes are repaired, and the matter keeps moving. If the lawyer is unresponsive and the matter involves a lawsuit, go to the courthouse and look at your case file, which contains all the papers that have actually been filed with the court.
If you've hired a new lawyer, ask her for help in getting your file. Also, ask your state bar association for assistance. If that doesn't work, as a last resort you may need to sue your lawyer in small claims court, asking the court for money to compensate you for what you've spent on redoing work in the file or trying to get the file.
Research
If you're not satisfied with your lawyer's strategy decisions or with the arguments the lawyer has been making on your behalf, you may even want to go to the law library and do some reading to educate yourself about your legal problem.
Get a second opinion
If you've got serious doubts about how your case is being handled, see a second attorney. Second opinions are relatively inexpensive -- an hour or two of a lawyer's time spent talking to you plus any time spent reviewing papers. And they are often very valuable in helping you decide whether to stay with your current lawyer or change to someone better suited to the task.
The more you can tell and show the second lawyer about your case, the better advice you will get about whether your case is being handled correctly and what might be done differently. Keep in mind, though, that no two lawyers handle a case in exactly the same way, and that a second opinion is usually a cursory review, not a comprehensive analysis.
Fire your lawyer
It's your absolute right to fire your lawyer at any time for any reason. Give it serious consideration if you're convinced the lawyer is doing a bad job or if your relationship with the lawyer has become intolerable.
But dumping a bad lawyer can be expensive. If you hire a new lawyer, you'll have to pay him or her to get up to speed on your case. If the first lawyer hasn't done much, this shouldn't cost a lot. But if you have a trial scheduled for three weeks from now, your new lawyer will have a monumental and time-consuming job.
Sue for malpractice
If you lost money because of the way your lawyer handled your case, consider suing for malpractice. Know, however, that it is not an easy task. You must prove two things:
File a complaint with your state's lawyer discipline agency
Every state has an agency responsible for licensing and disciplining lawyers. In most states, it's the bar association; in others, the state supreme court. The agency is most likely to take action if your lawyer has failed to pay you money that you won in a settlement or lawsuit, made some egregious error such as failing to show up in court, didn't do legal work you paid for, committed a crime, or has a drug or alcohol abuse problem.
Unfortunately, these state agencies are famous for moving at a slow pace, not pursuing complaints vigorously, and communicating poorly with people who file complaints. Still, it is important to report a legal skunk. Many agencies wait until they have several similar complaints about a particular attorney before taking action.
Getting compensated
State bar associations are primarily concerned with punishing lawyers (though rarely severely), not compensating clients. But all states except Maine, New Mexico, and Tennessee do have funds from which they may reimburse clients whose attorneys stole from them.
You're Concerned About the Lawyer's Work
It's often hard for a client to know whether or not a lawyer is doing a good job. But if you think your lawyer's ability leaves something to be desired, investigate -- before it's too late.
Communicate
If your lawyer doesn't seem to be working on your case, talk to your lawyer and explain your concerns.
Get your file
If you can't find out what has (and has not) been done, you need to get hold of your file. You can read it in your lawyer's office or ask your lawyer to send you copies of everything -- all correspondence and everything filed with the court or recorded with a government agency.
If you've already ended your relationship with the lawyer, you need your file pronto to make sure all deadlines are met, mistakes are repaired, and the matter keeps moving. If the lawyer is unresponsive and the matter involves a lawsuit, go to the courthouse and look at your case file, which contains all the papers that have actually been filed with the court.
If you've hired a new lawyer, ask her for help in getting your file. Also, ask your state bar association for assistance. If that doesn't work, as a last resort you may need to sue your lawyer in small claims court, asking the court for money to compensate you for what you've spent on redoing work in the file or trying to get the file.
Research
If you're not satisfied with your lawyer's strategy decisions or with the arguments the lawyer has been making on your behalf, you may even want to go to the law library and do some reading to educate yourself about your legal problem.
Get a second opinion
If you've got serious doubts about how your case is being handled, see a second attorney. Second opinions are relatively inexpensive -- an hour or two of a lawyer's time spent talking to you plus any time spent reviewing papers. And they are often very valuable in helping you decide whether to stay with your current lawyer or change to someone better suited to the task.
The more you can tell and show the second lawyer about your case, the better advice you will get about whether your case is being handled correctly and what might be done differently. Keep in mind, though, that no two lawyers handle a case in exactly the same way, and that a second opinion is usually a cursory review, not a comprehensive analysis.
Fire your lawyer
It's your absolute right to fire your lawyer at any time for any reason. Give it serious consideration if you're convinced the lawyer is doing a bad job or if your relationship with the lawyer has become intolerable.
But dumping a bad lawyer can be expensive. If you hire a new lawyer, you'll have to pay him or her to get up to speed on your case. If the first lawyer hasn't done much, this shouldn't cost a lot. But if you have a trial scheduled for three weeks from now, your new lawyer will have a monumental and time-consuming job.
Sue for malpractice
If you lost money because of the way your lawyer handled your case, consider suing for malpractice. Know, however, that it is not an easy task. You must prove two things:
- your lawyer messed up and
- you would have won your case otherwise.It's not enough to show that your lawyer made a mistake -- you must show that the mistake caused you financial loss that you would not have suffered if your lawyer had handled your case properly in the first place.
If you want to sue for legal malpractice, do it as quickly as possible. A common defense raised by attorneys sued for malpractice is that the client waited too long to sue. And because this area of the law can be surprisingly complicated and confusing, there's often plenty of room for argument.
Legal malpractice cases are expensive to pursue, so do some investigating before you dive in. There's no point in suing if the lawyer doesn't have either malpractice insurance or valuable assets from which to pay you if you win.
Source: NOLO
Legal malpractice cases are expensive to pursue, so do some investigating before you dive in. There's no point in suing if the lawyer doesn't have either malpractice insurance or valuable assets from which to pay you if you win.
Source: NOLO
Thursday
Nigeria’s Stone Age President to spend additional week in London at the behest of a European Dentist
By Seyi Ariwoola
President Muhammadu Buhari has added an additional week to his stay in London over an appointment with his dentist.Apparently, over the course of his rudderless 8 years in office, things have deteriorated so much that he can’t find a single dentist in Nigeria to care for his oral hygiene needs.
Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, announced this in a statement on Tuesday evening.
The president was supposed to return to the country this week after travelling to the United Kingdom last week to attend the coronation of King Charles III.
Giving an update on Buhari’s UK trip in a news release, Adesina said Buhari was currently undergoing dental care.
President Muhammadu Buhari will be in London, United Kingdom, for an additional week, at the behest of his Dentist, who has started attending to him,” he said.
“The specialist requires to see the President in another five days for a procedure already commenced.”
Adesina added: “President Buhari had joined other world leaders to attend the coronation of King Charles III on May 6, 2023.”
Wednesday
Femi Otedola dismisses friendship with billionaire, Tony Elumelu
By Chukwuani Victoria
Billionaire businessman, Femi Otedola has said that he offered to acquire Transcorp Plc for N250 billion and take the company’s market capitalization to N2 trillion but his bid was rejected.
Recently, Otedola acquired a 5.52 percent stake in Transcorp Plc to become the second largest shareholder of the company, but then sold out his entire holding to Tony Elumelu, the chairman of the group.
In a press statement he shared with The Cable on Tuesday morning, Otedola spoke for the first time on the events surrounding his bid to take over the company.
The statement read, “In 2005, while Tony was the Managing Director of Standard Trust Bank he approached me to get funds to acquire UBA. I enthusiastically gave him $20million, which was N2billion at that time to buy the necessary shares in UBA for the acquisition. After a short period of time, the share price moved up and I decided it is was a good moment to sell and get out of the bank. However, Tony appealed to me to hold on to the shares as he was convinced that there were future prospects – so I kept the shares.
“I became Chairman of Transcorp Hotel in 2007 with a shareholding of 5% and unknowingly Tony gradually started buying shares quietly.
“By the following year in 2008 I went bankrupt in Nigeria. Tony proceeded to take my shares in UBA to service the interest on my loans and he also took over my shares in Africa Finance Corporation, where I was the largest shareholder.
“Shortly after, Albert Okumagba informed me that an American firm wanted to acquire my shares in Transcorp, which I then agreed to sell. However, this supposed American firm turned out to be Tony Elumelu. The revelation of this prompted me to resign as Chairman of the hotel.
“Years later in 2012 Tony said he wanted to see me so we met in my office where I had previously had a meeting with foreign investors who had not yet departed the premises.
Curious to know, he asked what sort of meeting I had had and I disclosed that I wanted to go into the power business, specifically Ughelli Power Plant. Tony quietly went ahead to bid for Ughelli and he outbid me by offering to buy the plant for $300 million.
“And as a some would say: the rest is history.
“Fast forward to the present…
“I offered to buy Transcorp Plc for N250 billion, but unfortunately, my offer was rejected. My goal was to maximize the company’s potential as a Nigerian conglomerate with a market cap of at least N2 trillion instead of the current N40 billion, but it seems some shareholders have a different vision.
“As a businessman, I believe in healthy competition and market dynamics. Two captains cannot man a ship, and I respect the majority shareholder’s decision to buy me out. This is the nature of the game.
“But let me be clear: my offer was made with the best intentions for Transcorp Plc and its shareholders. I saw an opportunity to unlock the company’s full potential and create value for everyone involved.
“It’s important for investors to understand that free entry and free exit are crucial to healthy markets. The scramble for shares after my acquisition is a testament to the value that Transcorp Plc can offer, and I hope the company continues to thrive under new leadership.
“My message to Transcorp Plc and its shareholders is this: I remain committed to the growth and success of Nigerian businesses, and I will always be looking for ways to create value for all stakeholders.
Stakeholders are unfortunately always shortchanged by getting stipends while the owners and managers of the business live a jet set lifestyle, which is detrimental to the stakeholders. Thank you for the opportunity to engage in this exciting chapter of Transcorp’s history.”
Elumelu has yet to officially react to the allegations levelled against him.
VANGUARD
Tuesday
Steve Jobs died over a decade ago but his ideas about the future endure
Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs died over a decade ago. With over 10 years of hindsight, we have an even greater sense of how deeply he impacted the tech industry—but also how the tech industry is beginning to move beyond some of the paradigms he established and the battles he fought.
Unlike many other tech CEOs who rose to prominence in the early part of the 21st century and subsequently faded away, Jobs continues to hold the public’s attention. He’s elevated as an icon of creativity, the rare executive who could not only run a business, but also predict what consumers really wanted. Apple’s track record during his tenure—from the iMac to the iPod and the iPhone—certainly bears this out.
“As thoughts grew into ideas, however tentative, however fragile, he recognized that this was hallowed ground. He had such a deep understanding and reverence for the creative process,” Jony Ive, the former head of Apple’s design and a close friend of Jobs, wrote in a new piece in The Wall Street Journal. “He understood creating should be afforded rare respect—not only when the ideas were good or the circumstances convenient.”
Ive added: “Ideas are fragile. If they were resolved, they would not be ideas, they would be products. It takes determined effort not to be consumed by the problems of a new idea. Problems are easy to articulate and understand, and they take the oxygen. Steve focused on the actual ideas, however partial and unlikely.”
Jobs’s focus on high quality and aesthetics helped transform Apple into a multi-trillion-dollar company. Whether Apple continues its stratospheric growth for yet another decade may hinge on whether it can successfully evolve into a provider of cloud services in addition to hardware—a shift that Jobs dimly saw before his death. In an October 2010 email, he suggested that the tech industry was on the verge of a “post-PC era,” and that 2011 would not only be “Year of the Cloud” but also see the continuation of Apple’s “Holy War with Google.” Unless Apple moved beyond an “old paradigm,” it would eventually fall behind its rivals.
While Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android still compete for their respective slices of the mobile OS market, Apple’s opponents have multiplied over the past decade. For example, Apple’s dedication to user data privacy under current CEO Tim Cook has put it in direct conflict with Facebook, whose business model hinges on vacuuming up as much data as possible from users. Apple has also been locked in a fierce legal battle with Epic Games, creator of the ultra-popular “Fortnite” game, over the size of Apple’s App Store commission.
In addition, Apple must ensure that it can continue to compete with its rivals in cutting-edge technologies including (but certainly not limited to) artificial intelligence (A.I.), machine learning, and the cloud. Although Apple was one of the first companies into the digital-assistant game when it rolled out Siri in October 2011, it has since lost ground to Amazon’s ultra-popular Alexa and Google’s voice-activated assistant. While most of the company’s hardware devices remain society-redefining hits, if there’s one thing that Jobs understood, it’s that the tech industry can shift very quickly under your feet.
DICE
Monday
African-Americans Who Served in WWII Faced Segregation Abroad and at Home
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| Photograph by David E. Scherman / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty |
CC™ Histofact
Some 1.2 million African-American men served in the U.S. military during the war, but they were often treated as second-class citizens.
When the Selective Training and Service Act became the nation’s first peacetime draft law in September 1940, civil rights leaders pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to allow Black men the opportunity to register and serve in integrated regiments.
Although African-Americans had participated in every conflict since the Revolutionary War, they had done so segregated, and FDR appointee Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, was not interested in changing the status quo. With a need to shore up the U.S. Armed Forces as war intensified in Europe, FDR decided that Black men could register for the draft, but they would remain segregated and the military would determine the proportion of Blacks inducted into the service.
The compromise represented the paradoxical experience that befell the 1.2 million African- American men who served in World War II: They fought for democracy overseas while being treated like second-class citizens by their own country.
Despite African-American soldiers' eagerness to fight in World War II, the same Jim Crow discrimination in society was practiced in every branch of the armed forces. Many of the bases and training facilities were located in the South, in addition to the largest military installation for Black soldiers, Fort Huachuca, located in Arizona. Regardless of the region, at all the bases there were separate blood banks, hospitals or wards, medical staff, barracks and recreational facilities for Black soldiers. And white soldiers and local white residents routinely slurred and harassed them.
“The experience was very dispiriting for a lot of Black soldiers,” says Matthew Delmont, a history professor at Dartmouth College and author of Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers. “The kind of treatment they received by white officers in army bases in the United States was horrendous. They described being in slave-like conditions and being treated like animals. They were called racial epithets quite regularly and just not afforded respect either as soldiers or human beings.”
Because the military didn’t think African-Americans were fit for combat or leadership positions, they were mostly relegated to labor and service units. Working as cooks and mechanics, building roads and ditches, and unloading supplies from trucks and airplanes were common tasks for Black soldiers. And for the few who did make officer rank, they could only lead other Black men.
As Christopher Paul Moore wrote in his book, Fighting for America: Black Soldiers—The Unsung Heroes of World War II, “Black Americans carrying weapons, either as infantry, tank corps, or as pilots, was simply an unthinkable notion…More acceptable to southern politicians and much of the military command was the use of black soldiers in support positions, as noncombatants or laborers.”
African-American soldiers regularly reported their mistreatment to the Black press and to the NAACP, pleading for the right to fight on the front lines alongside white soldiers.
“The Black press was quite successful in terms of advocating for Blacks soldiers in World War II,” says Delmont. “They point out the hypocrisy of fighting a war that was theoretically about democracy, at the same time having a racially segregated army.”
In 1942, the Black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier—in response to a letter to the editor by James G. Thompson, a 26-year-old Black soldier, in which he wrote, “Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?"—launched the Double V Campaign. The slogan, which stood for a victory for democracy overseas and a victory against racism in America, was touted by Black journalists and activists to rally support for equality for African-Americans. The campaign highlighted the contributions the soldiers made in the war effort and exposed the discrimination that Black soldiers endured while fighting for liberties that African Americans themselves didn’t have.
As casualties mounted among white soldiers toward the final year of the war, the military had to utilize African-Americans as infantrymen, officers, tankers and pilots, in addition to remaining invaluable in supply divisions.
From August 1944 to November 1944, the Red Ball Express, a unit of mostly Black drivers delivered gasoline, ammunition, food, mechanical parts and medical supplies to General George Patton’s Third Army in France, driving up to 400 miles on narrow roads in the dead of night without headlights to avoid detection by the Germans.
The 761 Tank Battalion, became the first Black division to see ground combat in Europe, joining Patton’s Third Army in France in November 1944. The men helped liberate 30 towns under Nazi control and spent 183 days in combat, including in the Battle of the Bulge. The Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black fighter pilot group trained at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, escorted bombers over Italy and Sicily, flying 1600 combat missions and destroying 237 German aircraft on ground and 37 in air.
“Without these crucial roles that Blacks soldiers were playing, the American military wouldn’t have been the same fighting force it was,” says Delmont. “That was a perspective you didn’t see much in the white press.”
After World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945, Black soldiers returned home to the United States facing violent white mobs of those who resented African Americans in uniform and perceived them as a threat to the social order of Jim Crow.
In addition to racial violence, Black soldiers were often denied benefits guaranteed under the G.I. Bill, the sweeping legislation that provided tuition assistance, job placement, and home and business loans to veterans.
As civil rights activists continued to emphasize America’s hypocrisy as a democratic nation with a Jim Crow army, and Southern politicians stood firmly against full racial equality for Blacks, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 that desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces in July 1948. Full integration, however, would not occur until the Korean War.
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