Photos : Marathon Runners Who Passed Out After The Race #LagosMarathon

  #LagosMarathon just ended, with Kenyan's Abraham Kiptom emerging winner. These are photos of some of te contestants who passed out immediately after the race.

Girl Ends Up With Black Eye After She Refused To Give A Guy Her Number(See Photos)

 This is shocking really, how can a man hit you because you refused to give him your number? But that is what Twitter user Erica Raynee claimed. She shared these photos writing: "Apparently niggas get in they feelngs when a bitch dont wanna give they number. First black eye smh"

Revered Lawyer Ricky Tarfa, SAN, Arrested by EFCC

 Senior Advocate of Nigeria and one of the most respected lawyers in Nigeria, Ricky Tarfa, was reportedly arrested by the EFCC yesterday evening Friday Feb. 5th at the premises of the Lagos High Court in Igbosere, Lagos Island, for alleged obstruction of justice.

EFCC Spokesman Wilson Uwujaren, who confirmed the arrest to Channels TV, said Mr. Tarfa was arrested for allegedly trying to prevent the anti-graft agency from arresting his clients, a Beninois national, Granhoue Sourou Nazaire and his Nigerian lawyer, who were on trial for offenses bordering on forgery and conspiracy.

The accused, who were already on bail, appeared in court yesterday and when EFCC tried to re-arrest them, their lawyer, Ricky tried to prevent it. Mr Uwujaren said ongoing investigations necessitated the re-arrest of the two foreigners, but Mr Tarfa allegedly hid them in his car from about 12:00 noon till about 5:00 pm before they eventually nabbed him and his clients.

'Amarachi Is A Disgrace To Womanhood' : VL Magazine Addresses Dethroned Beauty Queen's Allegations

  Yesterday, we posted a story about the dethroning of former face of VL Magazine Joyce Amarachi Mbatu. She alleged that the Magazine cancelled her contract because she refused to do a topless photo shoot. If you missed it, find it here

The management of VL Magazine, through the CEO have issued an official  statement addressing Amarachi's allegations. 

Describing her as a "disgrace to womanhood" who wasn't fit to be a "queen to a mechanic shop". they contend that she was briefed about her duties as the face of the brand, and insist she was not asked to come to Benin for a topless shoot. 

Read their statement below

Words from the CEO:

"My manager called my attention to  updates from different blogs about the dethroned queen bed ... here is my official statement concerning all the controversies as regards the dethroned queen ( Amarachi Joyce Mbatu)

During the time of the competition all contestants where informed that when the winner emerge the winner will do a bikini shoot as part of her portfolio and they all agreed (Amarachi inclusive) .  ‎All contestants where also informed that as a beauty queen of VL you must be avaliable at all times when the brand needs you  and this includes traveling to other states/countries for jobs, I told them specifically that who ever won't be able to meet with these requirements should quit and they all agreed and said they are available 100%. (Amarchi Inclusive)

When Amarachi won face of VL it was from one complain to another, she wanted things to go her which was not possible...As face of ‎VL winner she was supposed to CO host our Tv show (Just Say It) with me but she opted out because she said her work won't  permit her to do that. Amarachi was supposed to come to Benin city for a shoot but she declined at first saying her parents won't allow her travel , In the end she agreed to travel but saying she will stay for just 3 hours. I spent more than 100 thousand naira to make sure Amarachi coming to Benin was stress a free one.

Amarachi tricked us saying she was coming to Benin  only to call us 2 hours later saying her flight was cancelled. I told her to send me her booking and flight number which she did and I traced the flight and discovered Amarachi didn't book any flight to Benin. When you are on a contract with a brand as a beauty queen or whatsoever you are supposed to be available at all times when the brand needs you but in Amarachi's case she wanted to dictate for the brand which is unheard of and inappropriate . She even said she won't always be available for the brand at all times because her job was a constraint ‎

Amarachi was not dethroned because we told her to do a topless shoot, she was disqualified because of her lack of commitment, availability and not been able to meet up with the brands requirements......Amarachi agreed to do a bikini shoot even before the competition as of part of her portfolio which every beauty queen does after winning a competition, after winning she said she didn't want it anymore......we didn't tell Amarachi to come to Benin and do a topless shoot.....

I want to say I am very disappointed in Amarachi for coming on social media trying to tarnish the image of the brand, she is a disgrace to womanhood and a very big liar....she is not even fit enough be a queen of a mechanic workshop.

Thanks for your support.....God bless" 

-Theo Olele 

CEO/Publisher VL Magazine Africa

Dramatic : Woman Crashes Her Own Funeral, Horrifying Her Husband Who Paid To Have Her Killed

 A woman named Noela Rukundo, gave her ex-husband, Balenga Kalala(both pictured above) the shock of his life by turning up to her own funeral, after he had contacted hitmen to have her killed while they were still married.

Rukundo had met her husband 11 years earlier, right after she arrived in Australia from Burundi. He was a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and they had the same social worker at the resettlement agency that helped them get on their feet.

Since Kalala already knew English, their social worker often recruited him to translate for Rukundo, who spoke Swahili. They fell in love, moved in together in the Melbourne suburb of Kings Park, and had three children (Rukundo also had five kids from a previous relationship).

She learned more about her husband’s past — he had fled a rebel army that had ransacked his village, killing his wife and young son. She also learned more about his character. Noela's ordeal began five days earlier, and 7,500 miles away in her native Burundi.

She had returned to Burundi, her birth country, from her home in Melbourne, Australia, to attend her stepmother's funeral. She lodged in a hotel. "I had lost the last person who I call 'mother. It was very painful. I was so stressed."she told BBC

By early evening, Noela had retreated to her hotel room. As she lay dozing in the stifling city heat of Bujumbura, her phone rang. It was a call from her husband in Australia

"He says he'd been trying to get me for the whole day," Noela says. "I said I was going to bed. He told me, 'To bed? Why are you sleeping so early? I say, 'I'm not feeling happy'. And he asks me, 'How's the weather? Is it very, very hot?' He told me to go outside for fresh air." Noela took his advice. "I didn't think anything. I just thought that he cared about me, that he was worried about me." But moments after stepping outside the hotel compound, Noela found herself in danger.

"I opened the gate and I saw a man coming towards me. Then he pointed the gun on me. He just told me, 'Don't scream. If you start screaming, I will shoot you. They're going to catch me, but you? You will already be dead. So, I did exactly what he told me."

The gunman motioned her towards a waiting car. "I was sitting between two men. One had a small gun, one had a long gun. And the men said to the driver, 'Pass us a scarf.' Then they cover my face. After that, I didn't say anything. They just said to the driver, Let's go. I was taken somewhere, 30 to 40 minutes, then I hear the car stop." Noela was pushed inside a building and tied to a chair.

"One of the kidnappers told his friend, 'Go call the boss.' I can hear doors open but I didn't know if their boss was in a room or if he came from outside. "They ask me, 'What did you do to this man? Why has this man asked us to kill you?' And then I told them, 'Which man? Because I don't have any problem with anybody.' They say, 'Your husband!' I say, 'My husband can't kill me, you are lying!' And then they slap me. "After that the boss says, 'You are very stupid, you are fool. Let me call who has paid us to kill you.'"

The gang's leader made the call. "We already have her," he triumphantly told his paymaster. The phone was put on loudspeaker for Noela to hear the reply. Her husband's voice said: "Kill her." Just hours earlier, the same voice had consoled her over the death of her stepmother and urged her to take fresh air outside the hotel. Now her husband Balenga Kalala had condemned her to death.

"I heard his voice. I heard him. I felt like my head was going to blow up. Then they described for him where they were going to chuck the body." At that, Noela says she passed out. As the gang's leader ended the call to Kalala, Noela was coming round. "I said to myself, I was already dead. Nothing I can do can save me. But he looks at me and then he says, 'We're not going to kill you. We don't kill women and children. He told me I'd been stupid because my husband paid them the deposit in November. And when I went to Africa it was January.

He asked me, 'How stupid can you be, from November, you can't see that something is wrong?'" He might have been a hit-man with principles, but the gang's leader still took the opportunity to extort more money from Kalala. He called him back and informed him that the fee for the murder had increased. He wanted a further 3,400 Australian dollars (£1,700) to finish the job.

Back at the hotel, Noela's brother was getting worried about her disappearance. He called Kalala in Australia to ask for $545 to pay the police to open an investigation. Kalala feigned concern and duly wired the money. After two days in captivity, Noela was freed. "'We give you 80 hours to leave this country. Your husband is serious. Maybe we can spare your life, but other people, they're not going to do the same thing. If God helps you, you'll get to Australia.'"they told her

Before leaving Noela by the side of a road, the gang handed her the evidence they hoped would incriminate Kalala - a memory card containing recorded phone conversations of him discussing the murder and receipts for the Western Union money transfers. "We just want you to go back, to tell other stupid women like you what happened," the gang told Noela as they parted.

"You must learn something: you people get a chance to go overseas for a better life. But the money you are earning, the money the government gives to you, you use it for killing each other!"

Noela immediately began planning her return to Australia. She called the pastor of her church in Melbourne, Dassano Harruno Nantogmah, and requested his help. "'It was in the middle of the night. I said 'It's me, I'm still alive, don't tell anybody.' He says, 'Noela, I don't believe it. Balenga can't kill someone!' And I said, 'Pastor, believe me!'" Three days later, on the evening of 22 February 2015, Noela was back in Melbourne.

By now, Kalala had informed the community that his wife had died in a tragic accident. It was the day he held a memorial service for her that she walked in on him "It was around 7.30pm," Noela says. "He was in front of the house. People had been inside mourning with him and he was escorting a group of them into a car." It was as they drove away that Noela sprang her surprise. "I stood just looking at him. He was scared, he didn't believe it.

Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like he was walking on broken glass. "He kept talking to himself and when he reached me, he touched me on the shoulder. He jumped. "He did it again. He jumped. Then he said, 'Noela, is it you?'… Then he start screaming, 'I'm sorry for everything.'" Noela called the police who ordered Kalala off the premises and later obtained a court order against him.

Days later, the police instructed Noela to call Kalala. Kalala made a full confession to his wife, captured on tape, begging for her forgiveness and revealing why he had ordered the murder. "He say he wanted to kill me because he was jealous," says Noela. "He think that I wanted to leave him for another man." In a police interview, Kalala denied any involvement in the plot. "The pretence," wrote the judge at his trial in December, "lasted for hours." But when confronted with the recording of his telephone conversation with Noela and the evidence she brought back from Burundi he started to cry.

Kalala was still unable to offer any explanation for his actions, suggesting only that "sometimes [the] devil can come into someone to do something but after they do it, they start thinking, 'Why I did that thing?'"

On 11 December last year, in court in Melbourne, after pleading guilty to incitement to murder, Kalala was sentenced to nine years in prison. "His voice always comes in the night - 'Kill her, kill her,'" says Noela of the nightmares that now plague her. "Every night, I see what was happening in those two days with the kidnappers." Ostracised by many in Melbourne's African community, some of whom blame her for Kalala's conviction, Noela sees a difficult future for her and her eight children.

Rescued Nigerian Girl Says She Would Rather Be With Boko Haram Militant Who Kidnapped And Impregnated Her

  About a year after she was rescued from Boko Haram captivity by the Nigerian army, Zara John, 16, is still in love with one of the fighters who abducted her and impregnated her, according to AlJazeera.

She was delighted to discover that she was pregnant with his child following a urine and blood test carried out by a doctor in the refugee camp to which she was taken after her rescue.

"I wanted to give birth to my child so that I could have someone to replace his father, since I cannot reconnect with him again," said Zara, one of hundreds of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram during a seven-year insurgency in northeast Nigeria.

But any decision over the baby was taken out of her hands. Her father drowned during flooding in 2010 so her uncles intervened. Some were adamant that they did not want Boko Haram offspring in their family - and insisted on an abortion. Others felt the child should not be blamed for its father's crimes. In the end, the majority carried the vote and Zara was allowed to keep her child, a son she named Usman who is now seven months old.

"Everybody in the family has embraced the child," Zara in a telephone interview, asking that her location remain undisclosed. "My uncle just bought him tins of Cerelac [instant cereal] and milk."

Zara was 14 when Boko Haram members fighting to establish an Islamic state raided her village of Izge, in northeast Nigeria, in February 2014.

They razed homes in the village, slaughtered men and loaded women, girls and children on to trucks.

Two of Zara's brothers were out of town when the assailants struck in one of a wave of hit-and-run attacks on villages, as well as suicide bombings, on places of worship or markets.

Zara's mother fell off one of the overloaded trucks but tried to chase after the vehicle that was ferrying away her only daughter and her four-year-old son, but was unable to keep up as it drove 22km to Bita.

At the time, Bita and other surrounding towns near the Sambisa forest were in Boko Haram control.

"As soon as we arrived, they told us that we were now their slaves," Zara recalled

Her days were spent doing chores and learning the tenets of her new religion, Islam, until two months later when she was given away in marriage to Ali, a Boko Haram commander, and moved from a shared house to his accommodation.

"After I became a commander's wife, I had freedom. I slept any time I wanted, I woke up any time I wanted," she said.

He bought me food and clothes and gave me everything that a woman needs from a man." She added that he also gave her a mobile phone with his number in it, and tattooed his name on her stomach to mark her as a Boko Haram wife.

Ali assured her the fight would soon be over and they would return to his hometown of Baga, where he intended his new wife to join his fishing business.

He told her he abandoned his trade and joined Boko Haram after his father and elder brother, both fishermen like himself, were killed by Nigerian soldiers.

In a June 2015 report based on years of research and analysis, Amnesty International said the Nigerian army was guilty of gross human rights abuse and extrajudicial killings of civilians in parts of northeast Nigeria, calling for an investigation into war crimes.

Ali was not at home when the Nigerian army stormed Bita in March 2015 and rescued Zara and scores of other women, taking them to a refugee camp in Yola in northeast Nigeria.

The raid came as international scrutiny on Nigeria increased after the high-profile abduction of 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria in April 2014, which caused outrage internationally and sparked the global campaign #bringbackourgirls. The girls are yet to be found.

But Zara and Ali stayed in touch by phone until Nigerian soldiers realised some of the girls in the camp were still in touch with their abductors, seized their phones, and moved them to another camp until they were reunited with their families.

Zara now lives with her extended family and son in a town far away from Izge.

Her male relatives took over control of her life again, with requests for interviews fielded by them and all of her movements monitored by her family. But asked her opinion, she said she would rather be with her Boko Haram "husband".

"If I had my way, I would retrieve the phone number he gave me," she said, regretting not committing his number to memory.

But Zara is realistic and knows the possibility of being reunited with Ali is slim.

Instead she wants to return to school when Usman stops breast-feeding, and maybe then run her own business.

"I want to do a business that is suitable for a woman, something that will not take me out of the house," she said.

Lara Oshiomhole Calls Divorce Rumours "Warped Imagination Of The Purveyors Of Lies"

 Some online platforms published a report this week claiming Adams Oshiomhole's new wife Iara Oshiomhole had filed for divorce after complaining that he was too fetish. This report has been rubbished in a statement released today. Iara's spokesperson described the report "as warped imagination of the purveyors of lies" insisting that Iara had no reason to leave her husband as their marriage is strong.

The press statement which was issued by Executive Director, Media and Public Affairs, Governor’s Office, John Mayaki, states that the Edo First Lady has been busy holding meetings & brainstorming on how to better the lots of the less-privileged Women and Children in the state through her pet project.

"The rumour mongers are well advised to find more productive engagements to deploy their energies rather than market inanities about public personalities all in their bid to sell their medium. Which Court of Law was the alleged divorce initiated and to whom was it served? Which country, state, municipal or county, if any, is the Court situated? And when was the action/suit filed? Of course the writers didn’t bother to inform their readers. The truth however is that the answers only exist in the warped imagination of the purveyors of the lies" the statement read...