The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has shortlisted five foreign coaches in the race to get a new manager for the Super Eagles ahead of their preparation for the World Cup in South Africa.

After a lengthy meeting on Friday in Abuja, the NFF recommended Bruno Metsu of France, Peter Taylor of the UK, Ratomir Djugovic of Serbia and Louis Van Gaal and Guus Hiddink, both of the Netherlands for the position of technical adviser of the first team squad.

The federation said that it had not yet officially approached any of the managers but that a one month screening process would now commence with a view to appointing one of the shortlisted coaches as technical adviser.

It was also announced that the beleaguered head coach of the Super Eagles, Shuaibu Amodu, would not be sacked but would move aside to take charge of the affairs of the home based players. The move is largely seen as a stay of execution after the football federation announced their disappointment at the Eagles performance in the just concluded African Nations cup.

The announcement was made late on Friday night by NFF technical committee chairman, Taiwo Ogunjobi who added that the meeting was adjourned until Tuesday next week.

It is believed that Ratomir Dujkovic, who coached Ghana for two years, is the favourite to land the job. He is currently the manager of the Under-21 Serbian team and has coached in various parts of Africa.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) — President Jacob Zuma of South Africa apologized Saturday for fathering an illegitimate child, in the face of national outcry.

Critics say that Mr. Zuma, a Zulu traditionalist who practices polygamy and currently has three wives and 20 children, including the child he fathered with another woman, has set a bad example in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of H.I.V./AIDS.

“I have over the past week taken time to consider and reflect on the issues relating to a relationship I had outside of wedlock,” Mr. Zuma said in a statement on Saturday, acknowledging that it “has been a subject of much public discussion and debate.”

He said: “It has put a lot of pressure on my family and my organization, the African National Congress. I deeply regret the pain that I have caused to my family, the A.N.C., the Alliance and South Africans in general.” He said he reaffirmed his commitment to “the importance of the family as an institution.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Zuma, who married for the fifth time recently, confirmed reports that he had fathered a child with Sonono Khoza, whose father leads the nation’s World Cup organizing committee.

Ms. Khoza gave birth to a girl in October. The presidency has said previously that Mr. Zuma has 19 children. Mr. Zuma said Tuesday that he had formally acknowledged paternity and made a traditional payment of inhlawulo to Ms. Khoza’s family.

via Reuters

The new Vice-Chancellor of University of Lagos , Prof. Tokunbo Sofoluwe will on Monday formally resume office as the Chief Executive of the institution.
Speaking with newsmen after a five-hour council meeting in Lagos yesterday, the Prof-Chancellor of the School, Deacon Gamaliel Onosode said the council’s decision was subjected to the provision of the relevant laws of the land .

He said: "Council subject to the provision of the relevant law has approved that Prof. Sofoluwe should take over tomorrow (Saturday) as the new Vice-Chancellor as Prof. Tolu Odugbemi clocks 65 years tomorrow (today).
Onosode explained that Prof. Odugbemi has graciously accepted the status of the law. "He has no reservation and he has graciously and honourably bowed out."

The Pro-chancellor added that the agreement that the federal government reached with the Academic Staff Union of Universities  was to procure the amendment of the law that will allow professors to retire from service when they reach 70 years, adding that, "until the law has been amended you must retire at 65 years.”

Prof Sofoluwe emerged as the new Vice-Chancellor of the institution following last fortnight’s  Joint Council and the Senate selection Board’s interview.
Three candidates were shortlisted by the Deacon Onosode-led Joint Council-Senate board. According to a reliable source close to the board, 21 applicants applied for the post vacated by Prof. Odugbemi.

Nine candidates were interviewed including two external candidates among whom were professors Friday Okonofor of the at the end of this month College of Medicine, University of Benin and Babajide Alo of Chemistry Department, Unilag and Sofoluwe were shortlisted by the selection board.

A source who spoke to THISDAY on the condition of anonymity, anybody up and above 60-year-old was not considered so as to prevent a repeat of what happened to Odugbemi who is going because of the mandatory 65-year-old limit inspite of the fact that he came on board in 2007. The source added that no candidate who is less than ten year-old, as a professor was not considered.

Members of the selection board included Deacon Onosode, Mrs. Evelyn Rewane-Fabian, Mr. Gbadebo Dallas, Prof. Rahim Bello and Prof. Dele Olowokudejo the former Dean, Students’  Affairs of the University.
Sofoluwe began his teaching career as Graduate Assistant at Unilag in 1976 and rose steadily to become a Professor of Computer Science in October, 1996.

An urbane scholar-researcher, Prof. Sofoluwe was Head, Department of Computer Science 1989-1991, and 1994-1996, Dean, Faculty of Science, 1998-2002 and member of the Governing Council of the University from 2000.
Prof. Sofoluwe was born on April 15, 1950 and he attended University of Lagos where he graduated with a Second Class Upper Division with honours in Special Mathematics in June, 1973.

The don received the prestigious German scholarship award for academic brilliance during his undergraduate days. Sofoluwe also won the Dean’s prize in 1971/72 session. He was a pioneer Youth Corps member in the defunct South-Eastern State of Nigeria.
Prof. Sofoluwe won a Commonwealth Scholarship to study at Edinburgh University where he obtained his Master’s and Doctorate degrees in 1975 and 1981 respectively.

via Thisday

We are happy to announce that our largest G-Africa event yet, G-Nigeria 2010, will be held February 18 - 20 at the University of Lagos.

The agenda is as follows:

Day 1: Tech Day - For Software Developers (February 18, 2010)
Day 1 will focus on pushing the boundaries of web applications using Google developer technologies. Google engineers and web development leaders will lead you through one full day of in-depth sessions on the latest Google technologies and hands-on codelabs. The day will also be about bringing brilliant developers together to share their own ideas. [Registration form for Day 1]

Day 2: Business Day - For Marketing Professionals and Entrepreneurs (February 19, 2010)
Day 2 will be full of Google product demonstrations for businesses to help spur innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. We will discuss how to create local content using online tools, how to market them and how to monetize. Furthermore, we will discuss several tools to help better manage your business. In addition, we have invited several venture capitalists from around the world to talk about raising capital for your business. [Registration form for Day 2]

Day 3: Computer Science Students Day (February 20, 2010)
Day 3 will contain developer workshops and presentations similar to Day 1 and include a session with Nigerian venture capitalists. We will also cover some of the existing Google student outreach programs and opportunities. [Registration form for Day 3]

For more information about the event, visit their site: http://sitescontent.google.com/gnigeriaday2010/

The past year was filled with exciting events in Africa, including G-Mauritius, G-Senegal, Lagos Code Camp as well as participation in several African BarCamps. Stay tuned for more in 2010!

Nigeria gives new meaning to everything
- or perhaps, things just get done differently here, and wrongly too.
For instance, the whole idea of corporate social responsibility is to
tame the rapacious greed inherent in big businesses so that they can
show some concern for public welfare.

Companies are encouraged to see how it
is also important, and indeed in their interest, to plan with the
concerns of the communities where they operate in mind, and strive to
improve the welfare of the people.

As a basic practice therefore, it
proves that environment and the people are at least as important as the
profit motive - as the Federal Government and the oil companies in the
Niger Delta have now discovered, at great cost. You cannot keep taking
and not give back, something is bound to unravel.

Since the deregulation of the telecom
industry in Nigeria, the business has thrived beyond the wildest dreams
of the service providers. Despite enormous challenges, including the
poor power supply which forces owners to rely on generators, the
turnover has been stupendous, no thanks to the high tariffs customers
are charged.

Some of these operators have, in their
version of corporate responsibility, frequently organised promos and
game shows where they promise huge benefits for customers who get
lucky. Occasionally too, viewers can actually see the prizes being
given out on television, and the tales of poor people who came with
nothing and left with fabulous gifts, including brand new cars, only
serve to titillate the desire of many who think they can become
millionaires overnight by doing nothing.

So, right from the beginning, one of
the things wrong with this method of showing appreciation to so-called
loyal customers, is that it risks encouraging a culture that waits on
miraculous wealth rather than hard work.

Now, a sordid dimension has been
brought to the activity. Conmen, ever alert to opportunities, have
taken advantage of the method to perpetrate their scams. They are able
to hack into the systems of service providers to send mail to
unsuspecting subscribers informing them of their “winnings” and asking
for account details, recharge cards or bogus processing fees to
facilitate the process.

For most people, it is an annoying
waste of time, but there are many gullible and desperate people out
there and they have fallen for the scam. And while it is tempting to
say it served them right for trying to collect money in game shows they
never participated in, the truth is, the matter is not so simple.

They are victims of a system that has,
over the years, shown that rewards don’t have to be earned. Moreover,
neither the regulatory body nor the operators of the networks have done
enough to protect the people from harm. There is a general lack of
willingness by the service providers to spend money on the requisite
software that will make their systems more difficult to hack into. It
is the same apathy that attends their efforts at upgrading their
machinery to ensure that their services improve, particularly in terms
of connectivity.

As we wait for the SIM card
registration exercise in March, which will hopefully make it easier to
trace less sophisticated scammers, a few measures can meanwhile be
emplaced to help reduce the incidence of scams. Service providers
should ensure that they send periodic alerts to their customers,
warning them about the methods of the fraudsters. They should also
endeavour to publish the names of winners of their game shows in
newspapers so that it becomes easily verifiable. It is even more
important, however, that they evolve a more responsible method of
practicing corporate responsibility, one both altruistic and
utilitarian.

But even in the best of circumstances, it would be naive to place
the welfare of the people in the hands of companies that were
established for profit. We must therefore call on the Nigerian
Communications Commission, the industry’s regulatory agency, to be more
alert to its responsibility to protect the people from the excesses in
the system. They should continue to discourage these promos that have
become virtual lotteries on television by liaising with the National
Broadcasting Commission, which successfully banned pastors from showing
their ‘miracles’ on the screen. This sin should be placed in that same
category.

via 234next

Obafemi Martins is in the frame to start Wednesday’s Group C clash between the Super Eagles and the Mambas of Mozambique in Lubango.

The former Newcastle FC of England star returned to the African finals after dashing off to the United Kingdom for a court appearance and has since been showing good form at training for the two–time African champions.

”Nigeria need to get a result from Wednesday’s meeting with the southern Africans at the Tundavala Stadium to be sure of a slot in the tournament’s last eight. With the competition being governed by the head-to-head rule, it means Nigeria can no longer finish at the head of the table, ” KickoffNigeria.com said.

Egypt extended their record Africa Cup of Nations run to 14 games without defeat when securing their quarter-final berth with a 2-0 win over Mozambique on Saturday.

"We are very proud of this record," said Egypt skipper Ahmed Hassan. "But most importantly, we won today against a very strong Mozambique."

Earlier, in the first leg of Saturday's double header from Benguela, Nigeria moved closer to joining the champions in the last eight with a 1-0 defeat of Benin.

Egypt went ahead after Dario Khan scored an own-goal - for the second successive game here in Angola - one minute after the restart.

Substitute Mohamed 'Gedo' Nagy put the game beyond doubt in the 81st minute to ensure The Pharaohs' progress.

Egypt, who cannot be dislodged from top spot in Group C, join competition favourites Ivory Coast, who assured their qualification from Group B 24 hours earlier.

Mozambique's Dutch coach, Mart Nooij, commented: "We made it very hard for Egypt, who are the reigning African champions.

"We gave away a goal early in the second half and so had to chase the game, otherwise it would have been a lot more difficult for them to beat us."

After their opening loss to champions Egypt, Nigeria went into their game with enormous pressure on their shoulders, and duly netted the match winner after 42 minutes.

Everton striker Yakubu Aiyegbeni was the man on the spot, converting the penalty awarded after Romuald Boco handled a goal-bound header by Osaze Odemwingie.

The goal atoned for Yakubu's miss earlier in the first-half, when put through on goal by Kalu Uche after 15 minutes, the big striker drilled his shot from inside the box inches away from the target with goalkeeper Rachad Chitou beaten.

This was Nigeria's third win in as many Nations Cup clashes with their neighbours and it moves the Eagles up to second on three points.

The result cost Benin striker Razak Omotoyossi 25,000 dollars after he struck a private wager on the game with his best friend, Nigerian striker Obafemi Martins.

"It was a tough match, we did not expect anything less because there are no longer small teams," said Nigeria coach Shuaibu Amodu.

"We are the more experienced of the two teams and we needed this game more. We won and that has now built confidence in the team after we lost our first match."

Benin skipper Damien Chrysostome said his team had been unfortunate.

"We were unlucky because we hit the bar twice. We tried what we could but at the end we lost. That is the reality," he said.

Nigeria’s super Eagles Coach, Amodu Shuaibu may be recommended to be fired by the Technical Committee of the Nigerian Football Federation, following a lack-lustre performance against the visiting Tunisian National team in Abuja Sunday.

As Nigeria’s chances of being at the first World Cup to be held on African soil hangs in suspense the Technical committee  NFF holds an emergency meeting Wednesday to amongst others possibly recommend for the sack of Amodu Shuaibu and proffer a way forward.

With two matches, outstanding, Nigeria needs decisive victory in its two outstanding matches against Mozambique and Kenya.

However the consensus amongst football buffs is that though the country had individual talented football stars, they have not been technically groomed to a world class team, and Coach Shuaibu has been blamed for this shoddy state of affairs.

Following the 2.2 draw between Nigeria and Tunisian, the mood in the Nations’ capital Abuja had been gloomy and downcast, an extreme opposite of what it was before the match from which Nigerians had high expectations.

THE first privately constructed submarine cable transmission link between Nigeria and the rest of the global community arrived in Lagos at the weekend.

Known and styled as Glo 1 undersea cable, the project owned by Globacom Limited was constructed at a cost of $800 million.

It links telecommunications services, including voice, data, broadband Internet between Nigeria and the rest part of the world.

It covers 9,800 kilometres sea route between Nigeria and other parts of the global community.

It was constructed by Alcatel-Lucent Technologies of France and it is believed to be first of its kind in terms of size and funding by any private company in the world.

Glo 1 submarine cable is the second to debut in Nigeria after the South Atlantic (SAT-3) submarine cable owned by Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and 33 other national carriers and multilateral organisations in Africa and elsewhere.

The cable, with a current capacity of 640 gigabytes per second and final capacity of 2.5 terabits per second, has landing points in UK, Portugal, Ghana and C�te d'Ivoire.

The contract was awarded two years ago to Alcatel Lucent to bridge the much-talked about digital divide and enhance connectivity and bandwidth capacity needs of Nigerians, Executive Director of Globacom, Mr. Adewale Sangowawa, said at the commissioning at the weekend.

"This is the first individually owned submarine cable network in the world and Globacom is re-writing history," Sangowawa explained at the seaside ceremony at the weekend.

Glo 1 submarine cable connects West Africa to the world via a United Kingdom (UK) port, and has landing points in Lagos and Bonny in Nigeria, Bude, in London and Lisbon in Portugal.

Besides these, it also deploys 16 branching units to connect the West Africa sub-region particularly in Cotonou, (Benin Republic), Accra, (Ghana) and other nations within the region where Glo Mobile operates.

Sangowawa explained that Glo 1 will complement SAT-3 optic fibre cable and fulfil the present and rapidly increasing high data requirement in the West African sub-region.

Alcatel Lucent will provide one optical SubMarine Cable Systems (STM-64) network capacity from the U.K. to New York to link Nigeria to the United States (USA) for crystal clear voice calls and high speed data/Internet transmission services.

Glo 1 is the first such project embarked upon by any single organisation in the world. The practice all over the world is for organisations or countries to team up and build such a facility.

The cable, which is of the 32 STM 64 type, has virtual infinite capacity and therefore offers sufficient capacity for traffic for the Globacom's mobile, fixed and Internet telecommunication services.

It offers 99.9 per cent up time reliability, world-class long distance voice, video and high-speed data communication services to the African customer.

Glo 1 caters for long-term bandwidth requirements for voice and data transmission in the West Africa sub-region. Currently, West African countries have a high dependability on satellite-based operators for fulfilling their bandwidth requirements. At present, bandwidth providers are retailing bandwidth they procure in bulk, which invariably is very expensive. Glo 1 fills this vacuum and will narrow the digital divide between Nigeria/Africa and the rest of the world.

It provides a cost-effective voice, data, video and e-commerce services across Africa, Europe and rest of the world. It will also carry traffic for other operators that would lease the service.

The Glo 1 project would reshape the face of telecommunications in Nigeria by offering unparalleled services to Nigerians, Sangowawa said.

It further enhances Nigeria's capacity to provide telephone hubbing services for the rest of the world.

Glo 1 enables Globacom to have a clear distinction in providing quality services through multiple and high quality direct links to various countries across the globe and allows it to interconnect with several international and local networks and leading traffic carriers in the world.

Landing points will also be extended to other West Africa countries soon. There will be a total of 18 branching units along the route upon completion of the project, Sangowawa added.

A "huge" number of militants in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta have accepted an amnesty deal and given up their weapons so far, officials said Sunday.

The presidential panel overseeing the implementation of the deal said it was pleased with the progress of the amnesty offered to the armed groups, which began August 6 and ends October 4.

"The quantity, quality and sophistication of weapons ... so far surrendered to the presidential committee put in graphic terms the seriousness of the conflict in the area and the danger we all faced as a nation," it said in a statement.

"This and the huge number of militant leaders and their followers who have accepted the offer and those who have contacted us on the logistics for their acceptance of the offer is a strong testimony that the programme is a huge success," it said.

But the task force gave neither the numbers of weapons received nor those of militants who have so far surrendered.

President Umaru Yar'Adua last June declared an unconditional amnesty for all militants in the region who laid down arms to embrace peace.

In response, the most prominent militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), declared a 60-day truce.

While some of the activists have publicly denounced the militancy and surrendered their arms, there are many other groups yet undecided on the amnesty offer.

Militant activities have disrupted operations of oil companies in southern Nigeria, resulting in a sharp decline in production.

Groups such as MEND say that they are fighting to ensure that the people of the Niger Delta benefit from the oil income.