Francisca Ordega scored a late equaliser for Nigeria to earn a 3-3 draw with Sweden in their Group D Women’s World Cup opener on Monday, signalling that Africa will make an impact during the month-long tournament.
A day after Germany crushed the Ivory Coast 10-0, Nigeria restored African pride with an all-out attacking style that won over the fans and shocked the fifth-ranked Swedes.
With Sweden hanging on for the win, Ordega ran onto a perfect pass from Ngozi Okobi and confidently fired the ball past the goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl in the 87th minute.
Nigeria had Sweden on the back foot for much of the match but found themselves 2-0 down at half-time after an own goal by Desire Oparanozie and a tap-in from Nilla Fischer, both scores coming from Sweden corners and the product of sloppy defending.
But the speedy Nigerians continued to press forward in the second half and were rewarded for their enterprise as they scored twice in a three-minute burst from forwards Okobi and Asisat Oshoala, who out-muscled Fischer for the ball at the top of the penalty area and then kept calm to score.
The Swedes were quick to respond, regaining the lead when substitute Linda Sembrant kneed a cross past Nigeria’s goalkeeper Precious Dede before Ordega levelled.
The Guardian
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Monday, June 8, 2015
Video - Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari steps up fight against Boko Haram
President Muhammadu Buhari continues his efforts to stamp out Boko Haram militants. He recently concluded a trip to neighbouring Niger and Chad, where he met with the Presidents Idriss Deby and Mohammed Yusuf. But with the group launching fresh attacks, CCTV's Deji Badmus finds out just how much work there's still left to do.
Asia's fastest man Femi Ogunode
Ogunode on June 4 broke the Asian record of the men’s 100m at the Asian Athletics Championships as he ran a time of 9.91secs to lower his previously held record of 9.93 secs.
Speaking on his latest achievement, Ogunode, who was virtually frustrated out of Nigeria to the Middle East, stated on his Facebook fan page that he has all the reasons to celebrate his rise to fame and stardom.
“When God gives you a reason to celebrate why won’t you……. I celebrate my victory after winning Gold and breaking the Asian record” the 24-year old said on Saturday as he again reflected on his awesome performance.
Interestingly, Ogunode who is now the fastest man in the world’s most populous continent started out as a boxer before switching to football and finally athletics in 2006.
Sadly, while Nigeria’s fortunes in men’s athletic is dwindling by the day on the home front and officials are doling out millions to recruit rejected America-based athletes who have failed to make any meaningful impact , the feat of Ogunode means that Nigerian men now own the record in the 100m’s men event in three top continents’ of the world.
Olusoji Fasuba with a time of 9.85secs remains Africa’s fastest man ever while Portugal’s Francis Obikwelu holds the European record with his time of 9.86secs.
Ogunode in a recent interview with Qatar’s first English sports weekly magazine, DohaStadiumPlus, took the lid off why he dumped Nigeria for Qatar and was equally unequivocal that he is happy he took the calculated risk which has now turned out to be one of his best decisions.
“I wanted to compete in the 2007 All-Africa Games in Algiers, Algeria. I ran in the Mobil Track and Field race, the Nigerian qualification event for it. I made the cut, but they dropped me without any explanation.
“A year later, I qualified for the biennial IAAF World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland, as the best age-group sprinter in Nigeria. Subsequently, I also made it to the senior side for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
“But due to politics within the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), they dropped me from the squad for Poland, pacifying me by saying I would get my chance in China. I agreed, as I always wanted to compete in the Olympics. But just two weeks prior to the Games, I found out I was out of the team. I felt powerless against the AFN’s internal games.
“It was then that I received an e-mail asking whether I was interested to do trials in Qatar. I wrote back saying I was, but that I didn’t have money to make the trip. They requested a copy of my passport and soon, I was attending trials in Doha. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made in my life,” he concluded.
A peep into Ogunode’s biography reveals that his maiden competition as an athlete was at the Obafemi Awolowo U-18 Championship in Ibadan, Nigeria, where he won gold in 100m and 200m in the same year he started running – 2006.
As stated on his personal website, based on his performance at the U-18 Championship. Ogunode was invited to participate in the 2006 ExxonMobil Track & Field Championship (Nigeria’s test event for the 2007 All African Games held in Algiers, Algeria), where he won the 5th place, although he didn’t qualify to participate at Algiers.
Undaunted by this, he continued with his trainings and his determination to succeed made him to become Nigeria’s no.1 junior athlete in 2008, a position that automatically qualified him for both the World Junior Championship and the Beijing Olympics, both of which he was denied attendance due to politicking within the athletics administration.
Ogunode moved to Qatar in October 2009 and began international competition the following year.
From then it has been an upward swing for Nigeria-born Qatar star. At the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, he took two gold medals, winning over 200m and 400 metres with personal bests of 20.43 seconds and 45.12 seconds, respectively.
This made him only the second athlete in the Games history to have won both events at the same competition. He also became the Asian champion in 200 metres, at Kobe, Japan. He equalled the Championship record – 20.41sec – en route to gold. At the ongoing 2015 Asian championship, Ogunode won three gold medals – 100m, 200m and 4x100m.
Hoping that Nigeria will get it right someday, Yusuf Ali the national record holder in Long Jump and the former Technical Director for the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, told PREMIUM TIMES that the country really needs to invest more in its youth athlete to bring the country back to full reckoning.
“The sad thing is that we are not investing enough in our youth athletes, imagine the Super Eagles can take a chattered flight to go and play a friendly in South Africa and we say we don’t have money to buy tickets for our youth to attend a competition they have worked and trained hard for., It does not speak well of us as a country ” Ali said as he reflected on the incidences that clouded Nigeria’s participation at the last Africa Youth Athletics Championships in Mauritius where the country was forced to present a lean squad which even missed the opening day of events owing to paucity of funds.
Ali said he feared the worse for Nigerian athletics if more concerted effort is not put in place to ‘catch them young’ and also invest in the youth.
“In this country we don’t even have the base, the base for track and field is like 6,000 athletes will start and at the end you will pick like 5 or 6 of them in the end that will be good. But now when you have a base of like 1,000 and you are now not even attending to them as you should then there is no future. I think that is one thing we should address. The base for track and field is very difficult, for football; anybody can just wake up and starting kicking any round object, it is very difficult in track and field, interest has to build very early.”
Premium Times
JPMorgan to eject Nigeria from key bond index
JPMorgan will eject Nigeria from its Government Bond Index (GBI-EM) by the year-end unless it restores liquidity to currency markets in a way that allows foreign investors tracking the benchmark to transact with minimal hurdles.
The bank said late on Friday it had extended the deadline to eject Africa's biggest economy by another six months to take into account the arrival of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Nigeria held closely-fought presidential elections in March, in which opposition leader Buhari defeated incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan, in the country's first transition of power through the ballot box.
JPMorgan, which runs the most commonly used emerging debt indexes, placed Nigeria on a negative index watch in January and then said it would assess its place on the index over a three to five months period.
"Nigeria's status in the GBI-EM series will be finalized in the coming months but no later than year-end," JPMorgan said.
Removal from the index would force funds tracking it to sell Nigerian bonds from their portfolios, potentially resulting in significant capital outflows. This in turn would raise borrowing costs for Africa's largest economy, already suffering from a sharp drop revenue following a plunged in oil prices.
Nigeria's forex and bond markets have come under pressure after the price of oil, Nigeria's main export, plunged. In response, the central bank fixed the exchange rate in February after devaluing the naira last year and tightened trading rules to curb speculation. The naira has lost 8.5 percent this year.
"If we are unable to verify these factors, a review of Nigeria's status within the benchmark for removal will be triggered," it said in report, adding that the factors included a liquid currency market.
Analysts did not expect JPMorgan to remove Nigeria.
JPMorgan added Nigeria to the widely followed index in 2012, when liquidity was improving, making it only the second African country after South Africa to be included. It added Nigeria's 2014, 2019, 2022 and 2024 bonds.
The bank said Nigeria continues to remain eligible for the GBI-EM index, which has around $210 billion in assets under management benchmarked to it, with a weight of 1.8 percent.
The central bank last week made a tiny adjustment to its exchange rate peg to the dollar, which one analyst said may indicate that it is beginning to think about how to loosen its currency regime.
Reuters
The bank said late on Friday it had extended the deadline to eject Africa's biggest economy by another six months to take into account the arrival of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Nigeria held closely-fought presidential elections in March, in which opposition leader Buhari defeated incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan, in the country's first transition of power through the ballot box.
JPMorgan, which runs the most commonly used emerging debt indexes, placed Nigeria on a negative index watch in January and then said it would assess its place on the index over a three to five months period.
"Nigeria's status in the GBI-EM series will be finalized in the coming months but no later than year-end," JPMorgan said.
Removal from the index would force funds tracking it to sell Nigerian bonds from their portfolios, potentially resulting in significant capital outflows. This in turn would raise borrowing costs for Africa's largest economy, already suffering from a sharp drop revenue following a plunged in oil prices.
Nigeria's forex and bond markets have come under pressure after the price of oil, Nigeria's main export, plunged. In response, the central bank fixed the exchange rate in February after devaluing the naira last year and tightened trading rules to curb speculation. The naira has lost 8.5 percent this year.
"If we are unable to verify these factors, a review of Nigeria's status within the benchmark for removal will be triggered," it said in report, adding that the factors included a liquid currency market.
Analysts did not expect JPMorgan to remove Nigeria.
JPMorgan added Nigeria to the widely followed index in 2012, when liquidity was improving, making it only the second African country after South Africa to be included. It added Nigeria's 2014, 2019, 2022 and 2024 bonds.
The bank said Nigeria continues to remain eligible for the GBI-EM index, which has around $210 billion in assets under management benchmarked to it, with a weight of 1.8 percent.
The central bank last week made a tiny adjustment to its exchange rate peg to the dollar, which one analyst said may indicate that it is beginning to think about how to loosen its currency regime.
Reuters
Friday, June 5, 2015
Dozens dead after suspected Boko Haram bombing in Yola Market, Nigeria
Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the main market in Nigeria's northeastern city of Yola, killing 29 people and themselves, officials said Friday, blaming the extremist Boko Haram group.
Another 38 victims, some with serious injuries, are being treated in the hospitals in this city already swollen with refugees from the conflict, Sa'ad Bello of the National Emergency Management Agency told The Associated Press.
"I can see blood splattered everywhere, including my car, but I can't give any detail because we are all running," bread seller Ayuba Dan Mallam said shortly after Thursday night's blast.
The explosion was timed to go off as merchants were closing shop, others were hurrying to make last-minute purchases and commuters were catching tricycle taxis home.
Deputy Police Superintendent Othman Abubakar blamed the Boko Haram extremist group and said two suicide bombers were among 31 corpses recovered from the scene.
It is the first such attack on Yola, which has had its population doubled by some 300,000 refugees fleeing the insurgent violence in the northeast that has killed some 13,000 people and forced 1.5 million from their homes. Boko Haram has been fighting for nearly six years to impose Shariah law across Nigeria. Half the population of 170 million is Christian.
Two hours earlier, eight soldiers were killed by a suicide car bomb at a checkpoint outside a military barracks in Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast some 410 kilometers (255 miles) northeast of Yola.
The Islamic extremists have stepped up attacks after a months-long lull during which a multinational force drove them from the towns where they had declared an Islamic caliphate.
More than 60 people have been killed since the weekend in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram. Daily attacks started after President Muhammadu Buhari declared at his inauguration May 29 that he is moving the command center for the war from Abuja, the capital in central Nigeria, to Maiduguri.
Buhari was in neighboring Chad on Thursday, urging more support for the multinational force in which battle-hardened Chadian troops have played a leading role.
AP
Another 38 victims, some with serious injuries, are being treated in the hospitals in this city already swollen with refugees from the conflict, Sa'ad Bello of the National Emergency Management Agency told The Associated Press.
"I can see blood splattered everywhere, including my car, but I can't give any detail because we are all running," bread seller Ayuba Dan Mallam said shortly after Thursday night's blast.
The explosion was timed to go off as merchants were closing shop, others were hurrying to make last-minute purchases and commuters were catching tricycle taxis home.
Deputy Police Superintendent Othman Abubakar blamed the Boko Haram extremist group and said two suicide bombers were among 31 corpses recovered from the scene.
It is the first such attack on Yola, which has had its population doubled by some 300,000 refugees fleeing the insurgent violence in the northeast that has killed some 13,000 people and forced 1.5 million from their homes. Boko Haram has been fighting for nearly six years to impose Shariah law across Nigeria. Half the population of 170 million is Christian.
Two hours earlier, eight soldiers were killed by a suicide car bomb at a checkpoint outside a military barracks in Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast some 410 kilometers (255 miles) northeast of Yola.
The Islamic extremists have stepped up attacks after a months-long lull during which a multinational force drove them from the towns where they had declared an Islamic caliphate.
More than 60 people have been killed since the weekend in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram. Daily attacks started after President Muhammadu Buhari declared at his inauguration May 29 that he is moving the command center for the war from Abuja, the capital in central Nigeria, to Maiduguri.
Buhari was in neighboring Chad on Thursday, urging more support for the multinational force in which battle-hardened Chadian troops have played a leading role.
AP
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