Jordon Ibe chooses England over Nigeria

 Jordon Ibe will commit his international future to England rather than Nigeria, according to the Super Eagles coach, Sunday Oliseh.

The 19-year-old Liverpool winger has represented England at under-18, under-19, under-20 and under-21 levels but also qualifies to play for Nigeria through his father and has been the subject of an international tug-of-war over his future.

Ibe has yet to play a senior game for either country, but now looks to have his heart set on representing England. The Nigeria coach and former captain had reportedly visited the player at Liverpool’s training ground last month to try to convince him to switch his allegiance to Nigeria.

“Jordon Ibe’s family informed me by a telephone call that he was giving priority to an England call-up. We wish them well,” Oliseh said on Twitter.

England’s manager, Roy Hodgson, has praised Ibe, who he said was brought to his attention by the former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard. England face Estonia and Lithuania in their final Euro 2016 qualifiers in October, having already secured their place at next year’s finals in France.

“He is certainly a player we like very much and certainly a player we have our eyes on. It’s far from impossible that he will get called up in one of the next games,” Hodgson said.

Liverpool bought Ibe from the League Two club Wycombe in 2012. He made his debut for the Merseyside club in 2013 and was sent out on loan to first Birmingham and then Derby to continue his development.

The winger was recalled from his loan spell at Derby in January and has gone on to make 19 appearances for Liverpool, featuring in all five of their games this season.

The Guardian

Six Nigerians dead in Mecca crane crash

Six Nigerian pilgrims are among the 107 people killed in Friday’s crane collapse at Mecca’s holy site Ka’aba, Saudi Arabia.

Kaduna State Task Force on Hajj spokesman Saidu Adamu yesterday confirmed the death of a member of the state’s delegation.

National Hajj Commission (NAHCON) confirmed the death of five other Nigerians.

It named the dead Kaduna pilgrim as Alhaji Adamu Shuaibu Kargi from Kubau Local Government Area.

Federal Government officials had on Saturday said no Nigerian died.

Gombe State Amirul-Hajj, Abdullahi Mai-Kano, said four women pilgrims from the state were missing after the incident.

According to him, the four pilgrims were from Akko, Dukku and Nafada local governments areas of the state.

Mai-Kano said the pilgrim was injured in her head, but had been treated and discharged.

He said the four pilgrims were declared missing after a thorough verification and bed checking in the three houses accommodating the state’s pilgrims.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia had earlier on Saturday confirmed that 107 people died.

The spokesperson for the Saudi presidency on the Affairs of the two holy mosques, Ahmad Al-Mansouri, said at “least 107 people were dead and another 238 were injured.

The Nation

Primary school in Jos collapses - 4 children dead

At least four children have died after a primary school building collapsed near the central Nigerian city of Jos, according to officials.

Twenty-four pupils were injured in the incident at the Abu Naima Islamic school on Sunday, Mohammed Abdulsalam, from the National Emergency Management Agency said.

It is unclear whether more students may be trapped under the rubble, he added.

Building collapses often occur during the rainy season in Nigeria.

The cause of the collapse is not clear, but investigators are trying to determine whether it may have been due to extra floors being added to the one-storey building.

A multi-storey church hostel run by popular Nigerian evangelist TB Joshua collapsed last September in Lagos killing 116 people.

The authorities said it had more floors than its foundation could hold.

BBC

Danny Glover in Nigeria to film Nigerian movie about the ebola outbreak

U.S. actor Danny Glover said Thursday that he is in Nigeria to star in a movie based on people who risked and sacrificed their lives to stop the spread of Ebola in Africa's most populous country.

Glover said he is proud to take part in the film, called "93 Days," because of the achievements made by the real-life characters. Nigerian actress Bimbo Akintola will portray Dr. Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, who along with her team diagnosed the first Ebola case in Nigeria.

Adadevoh put the patient under quarantine, and stubbornly refused to discharge the Liberian man who was sick with the infection despite pressure.

Adadevoh eventually died along with three other hospital staff that had contracted the disease. Her actions ensured that the fast-spreading viral infection was quickly contained.

Glover will portray the director of the hospital where Adadevoh worked.

Akintola said the movie is a story of how Nigeria— a country where many institutions have weakened due to endemic corruption and ethnic strife — triumphed over the spread of Ebola, which ravaged her West African neighbors of Guinea, Sierra-Leone and Liberia.

"Nigerians acted as one. There was nothing about you being from different ethnicity or different political party, it was about Nigerians just standing up and doing this incredible thing for Nigeria," Akintola said.

She said the movie will be about courage in the face of death. "The doctors at First Consult (hospital) didn't ask for an Ebola patient. They weren't expecting it. But they stood up to the plate when it turned out the patient had Ebola. No one run away. That is courage in the face of death," Akintola said.

About 12,000 people fly out of Nigeria daily to different corners of the globe, Akintola said, adding that an Ebola outbreak in Nigeria would have had a devastating effect on the world.

According to the World Health Organization, news of the first Ebola case in Nigeria on July 23 last year rocked public health communities all around the world.

"Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and its newest economic powerhouse. For a disease outbreak, it is also a powder keg. The number of people living in Lagos — around 21 million — is almost as large as the populations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone combined," WHO said last year in a publication about the outbreak.

Lagos also is characterized by a large population living in crowded and unsanitary conditions in many slums, it said.

Thousands of people move in and out of Lagos, Africa's largest city, every day, constantly looking for work or markets for their products in a busy metropolis with frequent traffic gridlocks, said WHO, adding that officials were worried how they would manage to trace people who had come into contact with persons infected with Ebola in order place them in isolation.

"The last thing anyone in the world wants to hear is the two words, 'Ebola' and 'Lagos' in the same sentence," said WHO, quoting Jeffrey Hawkins, the United States Consul General in Nigeria at the time.


AP

Video - Nigeria prison reforming Boko Haram members

Nigeria has launched several programmes to try and reform captured members of the Boko Haram group.

The violent extremist group has been active in the north-east of the country, as well as across the border in Chad, Niger and Cameroon.