Greek giants Olympiacos have joined the hunt to sign Nigeria international midfielder Sani Kaita. There are speculations too that English Premier League side West Ham are another likely suitors seeking the signature of the Kano indigene.
After loan spells in Russia in the past two seasons, Kaita still has a contract with French side Monaco, but he could well be on the move again, either to his preferred destination England, where West Ham have made enquiries; Olympiacos in Greece or Spain, where he has interested Espanyol and Sevilla.
"We're only waiting for a concrete offer from the interested clubs before we really know where he will be playing in the new season," disclosed one of Kaita's representatives, Tijjani Babangida, to MTNFootball.com.
"Kaita's preferred choice is England and he can get a work permit because he has featured in more than 70% of Nigeria's matches in the last two years."
Defensive midfielder Kaita hogged the headlines for the wrong reasons during the 2010 World Cup when he was sent off for a touchline tangle with a Greek player.
There will later be death threats against him after Nigeria lost the match 2-1 to further narrow their chances of making it to the knockout stage of the tournament in South Africa.
The relative stability in power supply in the country may soon be disrupted as electricity workers under the aegis of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) have directed their members to embark on indefinite strike action from Monday.
The workers are protesting against the Federal Government's planned privatisation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and failure to pay the workers accrued benefits amounting to over N69 billion.
The news of the imminent strike came hours after fire gutted the old Ijora Power Station in Lagos yesterday, destroying electrical equipment worth millions of naira.
The workers are protesting non-payment of arrears of monetisation from 2003 to date, balance of 150 per cent salary increase and casualisation of PHCN workforce.
Vice-President of Lagos/ Ogun Zone of NUEE, Mr. Mbang Obol Ntukube, said the government and PHCN management reneged on the agreement reached in May to address their grievances within four weeks.
Ntukube noted that the workers had since submitted their account details to the management but no payment was made.
On the possibility of negotiating with the government over the weekend to avert the strike, he said the workers are tired of holding talks with the government.
"We are not meeting with them again. What kind of meeting? They keep on wasting PHCN resources in holding meetings. Is it not government that is paying? It is from PHCN resources. You know what it costs to meet at Sheraton. We go there to meet every day at the expense of PHCN. We won't meet again; we want payment," he said.
Ntukube disclosed that Lagos/Ogun Zone was in total support of the actions of the National Secretariat of NUEE against the privatisation of PHCN and warned agents of privatisation to steer clear of PHCN installations, as the workers cannot guarantee their safety.
On the allegation that the workers are not doing enough to improve electricity supply, Zonal Organising Secretary, Mr. Richard Kedee, said without the efforts of the workers, the whole electricity network would have collapsed over long years of neglect. He pointed out that the workers cannibalised old equipment to repair new ones.
Both the NUEE and the Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies (SSAEAC) had earlier insisted that there was no going back on the July 25 deadline handed down to the management of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to address their grievances.
Meanwhile, THISDAY gathered that yesterday's fire incident at the old Ijora Power Station was caused by welders working for an advertising agency, which was mounting a billboard at the top of the gigantic building.
It took the intervention of the men of the Lagos State Fire and Safety Services, Nigeria Ports Authority, Police and the Federal Road Safety Commission to put out the inferno.
At the time of the incident, the power station was not transmitting electricity as it had been abandoned over the years.
British Nmachi Ihegboro has amazed genetics experts who say the little girl is not an albino.
Dad Ben, 44, a customer services adviser, admitted: "We both just sat there after the birth staring at her."
Mum Angela, 35, of Woolwich, South London, beamed as she said: "She's beautiful - a miracle baby."
Ben told yesterday how he was so shocked when Nmachi was born, he even joked: "Is she MINE?"
But as the baby's older brother and sister - both black - crowded round the "little miracle" at their home in South London, Ben declared: "Of course she's mine."
Blue-eyed blonde Nmachi, whose name means "Beauty of God" in the Nigerian couple's homeland, has baffled genetics experts because neither Ben nor wife Angela have ANY mixed-race family history.
Pale genes skipping generations before cropping up again could have explained the baby's appearance.
Ben also stressed: "My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn't been, the baby still wouldn't look like that.
"We both just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages - not saying anything."
Doctors at Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup - where Angela, from nearby Woolwich, gave birth - have told the parents Nmachi is definitely no albino.
Ben, who came to Britain with his wife five years ago and works for South Eastern Trains, said: "She doesn't look like an albino child anyway - not like the ones I've seen back in Nigeria or in books. She just looks like a healthy white baby."
He went on: "My mum is a black Nigerian although she has a bit fairer skin than mine.
"But we don't know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist.
"But even then, what is with the long curly blonde hair?"
Professor Bryan Sykes, head of Human Genetics at Oxford University and Britain's leading expert, yesterday called the birth "extraordinary".
He said: "In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child - and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents.
"This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing."
Prof Sykes said BOTH parents would have needed "some form of white ancestry" for a pale version of their genes to be passed on.
But he added: "The hair is extremely unusual. Even many blonde children don't have blonde hair like this at birth."
The expert said some unknown mutation was the most likely explanation.
He admitted: "The rules of genetics are complex and we still don't understand what happens in many cases."
The amazing birth comes five years after Kylie Hodgson became mum to twin daughters - one white and the other black - in Nottingham.
Kylie, now 23, and her partner Remi Horder, now 21, are both mixed race.
Even so the odds were estimated at a million to one.
The Sun told in 2002 how a white couple had Asian twins after a sperm mix-up by a fertility clinic.
Yesterday three-day-old Nmachi's churchgoing mum Angela admitted that she was "speechless" at first seeing her baby girl, who was delivered in a caesarean op.
She said: "I thought, 'What is this little doll?'
"She's beautiful and I love her. Her colour doesn't matter. She's a miracle baby.
"But still, what on earth happened here?"
Her husband told how their son Chisom, four, was even more confused than them by his new sister.
Ben said: "Our other daughter Dumebi is only two so she's too young to understand.
"But our boy keeps coming to look at his sister and then sits down looking puzzled.
"We're a black family. Suddenly he has a white sister."
Ben continued: "Of course, we are baffled too and want to know what's happened. But we understand life is very strange.
"All that matters is that she's healthy and that we love her.She's a proud British Nigerian."
Queen Mary's Hospital said: "Congratulations to Angela and her family on the birth of their daughter."
The friendship that existed between Nigeria and South Africa seems to have been thawed as the country which has remained a major trading partner and regional ally deported 47 Nigerians yesterday.
According to Nigeria Immigration Service sources, the deportees made up of 46 males and one female were disembarked at the cargo terminal of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos from a chartered flight from Johannesburg.
After waiting for sometime, the deportees were allowed to leave the airport to their homes or other destinations within Nigeria. Some of the deportees who spoke with newsmen said the South African Authority has become antagonistic to Africans residing in that country and became very hostile with a regime of clampdowns and harassment.
The South Africa Authority they said was more hostile to African immigrants from Nigeria. The deportees noted that this attitude took a more aggressive tone immediately after the World Cup tournament, which was the first to be hosted by any African country.
"South Africans have always been hostile to Africans that live in their country while they fear the white people. It is worse with us Nigerians who they believe take their jobs away, so they have been harassing us for many years now and after the World Cup they started harassing us again and now they have deported us. I left everything I have laboured for years there," one of the deportees who refused to give his name said.
The deportee also said that they were treated like common criminals.
Two weeks ago there was report that a young Nigerian lady that lived and was studying in South Africa and returned to Nigeria to attend a wedding.
As she landed in Johannesburg she was stopped by Immigration at the airport and put on the next plane back to Nigeria.
The lady cried through the six hours flight to Lagos because she was a medical student in one of the universities in South Africa and she was to start her exams in the next two days before she was forced back to Nigeria.
