I am tired Of Stardom - Funke Akindele

“I was at the airport sometime back and a woman came to say hello. Of course, I greeted her politely. Again, she came and I did same thing. Again, she came and I was still my smiling self. This went on like 20 times and she brought many people to see me! When it was time to board the plane, I was on a queue and suddenly had a slap on my back! It was the woman and she said, ‘Abebelube’ (Yoruba word for a more-than-smart person) and laughed. I was hurt! But I just grinned and said ‘thank you ma.’ 


The normal Funke Akindele would have reacted but I just reminded myself of the status. But I am human! I remember having fever, went to the clinic, was asked to run a test and as my doctor attended to me, another doctor passed by and said in everyone’s hearing that, ‘Funke Akindele came for a pregnancy test!’ Though he was joking, what if those people picked it up and the rumour spread? Even if I came for a pregnancy test, am I not entitled to my privacy? It is not too enviable a world.”

With this, it’s obvious that the actress who is well known as Jenifa is tired of stardom and wishes she could have her privacy but with the way things are with her right now, she is like a golden fish, she has no place to hide. Do you think she is right with this statement or not? Leave your comment please!

LASTMA official caught in the act

Watch the tape!

The National disgrace Murtala Muhammed named Global Airport - Hottest airport in the world !!!

Simply how much does a country need to keep its busiest international airport from running as an oven? The Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos must be the latest airport in the world. It is easily the latest I've travelled through and I have been through quite a lot of airports. Even the Nairobi airport in Kenya that has been engulfed by fire is much less hot as the MMIA.

Continue after the break.

You should not even begin with comparing it with the airport in Cape Town or Johannesburg, South Africa. Ghana's Kotoka International Airport, Accra might be small but it doesn't meet you with the repulsiveness the MMIA greets you with. Even the Eyadema airport in Togo includes a better atmosphere. The Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in Dakar, Senegal trumps ours by light years. That is these are African countries.

We dare not try to compare with airports outside Africa. The moment you descend from the plane to go through the immigration point, the sensation is like you're being punished for daring to visit to Nigeria – if your foreigner – or you're being punished for daring to leave the nation – if your Nigerian. The saddest part with this reality is that money isn't the key reason why we have an airport that makes us look like we are a people without shame. Or, are we?

There is a chance you are busy during the week. If you find time this Sunday, please pay a visit to the MMIA. Find your way to the Departure Hall. If it does not remind you of the old Oshodi in Lagos, I’d write an apology for everyone who says it doesn’t. Of course, there is a chance they quickly react to this piece to make a few cosmetic changes. If it looks better this Sunday because of this piece, just wait another four weeks; I can bet it will be back to its seamy self.

Last Sunday, there were more touts than there were passengers inside the airport. The system is such that even getting your boarding pass to travel is made difficult so an incentive is created for you to engage one of the touts. I was approached to pay N5,000 to get my boarding pass. I wouldn’t pay because I just needed to see if I’d miss my flight despite arriving over three hours earlier. If that had happened, I’d have made sure the airline in question never gets to try it with anyone again.

Where else could an anomaly like this happen? If you arrive the airport two hours before your flight, there is a chance you miss your flight not because that is not enough time before your flight but because somehow, someway, bottlenecks have been created to make you need touts to do what you’d do within minutes elsewhere. Nigeria is a nightmare!

If per chance you are wondering why one would dedicate a column to an airport of all the myriad of issues facing Nigeria, please have a rethink. The airport is an essential part of a country’s prestige and perception. Any country with a badly managed airport as ours is likely to be as badly managed as our country. If a country cannot manage its main airport, how can it manage anything else? Travelling through Section D 34 on Sunday and it was as though someone was increasing the heat as we were getting boiled.

How much does it cost to make the air-conditioning systems work? What does it cost to make the airport clean enough? Why should we have people in queues for hours just to go through immigration and security checks? Why have more metal detectors if passengers are made to use just one or two on most occasions? Body scanners have been in use since 2007, how much does it cost to have them in our major airports? Why is Nigeria the only country where, to travel, you must have your box opened and ransacked by security men? What is the essence of running these same bags through electronic security? Why in the world can’t we get even the simplest of things right?

The first impression you get about a country upon visiting is its airport. There are people who intentionally run their flight connections through some airports just to make use of their facilities or make purchases. I know people who travel to other parts of the world but make sure to travel through Dubai simply because of the travel experience. I dare not start comparing our airports with Dubai’s because then I’d be comparing two things of different kinds. You will not find a Nigerian who has been outside of this country who is not ashamed of our airports.

Of course, this does not include Nigerians who call things that do not exist as though they do; Nigerians who look at the poverty and gross unemployment and proclaim our lives are being transformed. You will not find a Nigerian who has the ability to face the truth who’d not admit shame at looking at our major airports. I was at the Addis Ababa airport last August when a Nigerian started lamenting behind me. She was shocked even Ethiopia could do better than the “giANT” of Africa. Giant ko, dwarf ni. We stay living in a delusion of grandeur that does not exist.

Having said all this, I will never be able to describe the pain and sadness that come with travelling from the MMIA. The only way you won’t feel this sadness is if you’ve gone past caring about this country or you are one of the reasons this country is so messed us as it is. The MMIA was modelled after Amsterdam’s Schipol. Over 40 years later, the MMIA is worse than it looked when the military government of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo remodelled it. Just look at Schipol airport today. If you dare compare both, tears will fill your eyes before you even get started.

Where then do we start? We can start by doing away with the touts inside the lobby. We can start by ensuring the air-conditioning systems work. We can look to make sure passengers are well-treated on arrival and departure. We always look at problems and immediately assume throwing money at them will solve them. I have since realised half the problems with Nigeria have nothing to do with money.

Even with all the money in the world, our airports and our country will not work as long as we do not have people who care about excellence. Caring about excellence means knowing that Nigerians deserve the best all the time. When we reserve the rights citizens of other countries take for granted, upgrade such to privileges for our citizens, we will always miss the point of making things work.

Nigerians deserve more but as long as we have people – including the President – dancing on national TV because a road contract has been awarded, we’d always have a situation where mediocrity will remain the norm. Would anyone say the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is the mess it is because of money? Nay. It is what it is because we are who we are. We have become a people accustomed to seeing nothing work.

It’d be great to see someone in authority do something about the mess that is the MMIA for starters. It’s a shame to Nigeria. But does Nigeria even understand what shame is? Does anyone really give a damn about the shame?

RIDICULOUS MAN SUES WIFE TO THE TUNE OF $120,000 FOR GIVING BIRTH TO UGLY CHILDREN.

You get to read some stories and you just can’t help but laugh out loud!
A certain middle aged man, Jian Feng recently sued his wife for giving birth to what he called an “incredibly ugly” girl.
“I married my wife out of love, but as soon as we had our first daughter, we began having marital issues,” he told the Irish Times.
“Our daughter was incredibly ugly, to the point where it horrified me.”

Initially Jian accused his wife of infidelity, because he knew he could never be the father of an unattractive child.

However, DNA tests proved that the child was indeed his. Feng’s wife then came clean and admitted she had about $100,000 worth of cosmetic surgery done in South Korea before they met.
Feng sued his wife on grounds of false pretenses, for not telling him the truth about the plastic surgery, and duping him into believing that she was beautiful. A judge agreed with Feng’s argument and ordered his wife to fork over $120,000.
Source Kineda

17-Yr-Old Engineering Prodigy Claims; ‘My Next Target Is To Construct An Aeroplane'

A 17-year-old secondary school student, Ismaila Suraju, has built a planting machine and a locally-made power generator that uses water and batteries, among others.The boy doesn't plan to prevent, he says his next goal is to build an aeroplane. Ismaila also claims to truly have a know-how to create a gadget that may frustrate election riggers in Nigeria.

When the student was younger, he had to produce a pair of slippers out of a cardboard to protect his feet from the scorching soil of the farm path.The necessity of protecting his face from sunlight also made him create a baseball cap, then cars, train, grinding machines, all with the exact same cardboard.

Half way through his secondary education, Suraju graduated into using aluminum sheets in making not only miniature automobiles, such as fire extinguishing vans, excavators, but a large size planting machine that can be used for planting, as well.

"Anything I see, I will like to do. We went for competition. I saw some people do a motorcycle they were riding. I said I would do a planting machine in a form of a vehicle that a person can drive. I thought in our country we don't have planting machines. Farmers are suffering. Then I took iron and aluminum sheets. I first did a small one that a small boy can enter.

Then I did a bigger one. I used wheelbarrow tyres, iron from metal bed, electric motor and motorcycle gearbox to make it,"the teenager says.The boy has also built a miniature boat with aluminum sheets and radio motors. Thus, it can move forward or backward when powered by dry cell batteries.

However, Suraju believes that he could do more with if he had better training and access to materials.

A power generator, introduced by the young prodigy, is powered by dry battery cells and water. He showed how to use the generator to charge a cell phone battery and the standing fan he made himself.

What is more, the boy also has the solution that will help to handle Nigeria's electoral malpractices.

The solution is a laptop-like device he fabricated which he calls"electronic voting system". He demostrated how voting is recorded on a pair of screens that look like those of small calculators. The "electronic voting system" is equipped with a central screen made of a translucent plastic with voting approval and disapproval written on either halves of it.

When he inserts a card that has voted into the voting box, the half that disapproves of voting will be lighted from within. If the one that has not voted, but registered is inserted, the half that approves of voting will be lighted.Suraju has managed to embody several ideas of his and now plans to develop new projects for the benefit of the country.

"I want to be a mechanical engineer. I want technology to go forward in our country, Nigeria. We need to develop technology.I want to make a bigger excavator that human beings can enter, and it will be working,"Suraju says.

Though he has created a miniature airplane, Suraju is confident he can built a big one that will carry people.

Suraju's maternal grandfather Malam Isa, who has raised the young talent, is proud of his grandson and always helps him with money to buy some of the things he needs.

Another lost for the ANTP

The aged actor died last night at an clinic in Abeokuta following suffering from a brief illness. The deceased was a member of Association of Nigerian Theater Arts Practitioners (ANTP), Abeokuta, Ogun state chapter, till his death, he's the daddy of prime actor, Segun Ogungbe. It could be recall he was reported dead a year ago Saturday, November 28, 2012, sequel to the mistake people made to announce him dead as opposed to his elder brother, yet another experienced movie story, Pa Akin Ogungbe who died at 78