Happy 125th birthday to us… 🥰

Union Berlin were not happy with Lamine Yamal after their 7-0 defeat to Bayern 😅

🚨👀 Lamine Yamal: “The problem now is that people are valuing things that don’t help win the Ballon d’Or. When they say that a PSG player has to win it because they won the Champions League” 🏆 “When you win the Champions League, they give you the Champions League trophy, which is for the best team, and the prize PSG has. Another different thing is that in PSG there is the best player in the world” 🔴🔵 “The Ballon d’Or has to be given to the best player in the world and that's it. Not to a player who simply scores 80 goals, because when you score 80 goals they give you the 'top-scorer' award of the season” ⚽️ “They are different things that people are not understanding. The best player in the world is the one that you, as a commentator, are watching the game and you are enjoying it, is different from everyone” #FCB ⭐️💙❤️

Whenever a United manager is appointed, there is always a group that don’t want him, then make it their mission to get rid of him. This is then heightened when we have a few bad results. While this is the case no manager has a chance of succeeding at United. #MUFC #ManUtd

5 years at Sporting Lagos and this image is one of the ones I love so much. 4/5 boys in this image have also made their moves with Linus Zika making it 5 and others ⏳ Linus Zika - Sparta Prague 🇨🇿 Mukhtar Adamu - Odds BK 🇳🇴 Yusuf Abdullahi - Aarhus Fremad 🇩🇰 Seun Akanji - Lillestroem Abubakar Haruna - 🇵🇱 Odinaka Okoro - ⏳ Others - ⏳

JUST IN: Hisbah Arrests 27-Year-Old TikToker Over Videos Featuring Women Ukasha Yahaya, 27, popularly known as UK International, has been arrested by the Kano State Hisbah Board over videos showing him hugging, carrying, swimming and bathing with women. The arrest has drawn attention to the Hisbah Board’s intervention in social-media content, as the TikToker is being held while investigations continue. Hisbah says Ukasha will be charged to court after the investigation. He reportedly apologised and said he was considering quitting such content as he prepares for marriage. His TikTok account has more than 262,000 followers and 2.4 million likes.

Young Lionesses forward Princess Ademiluyi, who is of Nigerian descent, was consoled by Nigeria’s players and staff after they eliminated England from the U20 Women’s World Cup 💚

We have been posting the husband too for those who haven’t seen it 👇 Bimbo Adekanmbi, MBA, FCCA, incoming governor of Oyo state. EDUCATION Obafemi Awolowo University — B.Sc. Accounting Oxford Brookes University — B.Sc. Applied Accounting Liverpool John Moores University — MBA, Strategy & Finance PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION Fellow (FCCA), Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) PRIVATE SECTOR EXPERIENCE Senior FI/CO Consultant CP Ships | 2004 – 2005 Lead SAP Treasury Consultant TNT | February 2005 – July 2005 Lead FI/CO Consultant & Finance and Accounting Expert IBM for the UK Department for Transport (DfT) | 2005 – 2006 Lead FI/CO Consultant / Senior FI/CO Consultant Accenture for BG Group | September 2005 – 2006 Systems Accountant, Business Process Engineer & Senior SAP Consultant XANSA Consulting for B&Q / Kingfisher IT | January 2007 – April 2007 SAP Business Engineer, FI/CO, FI-CA, PSCD/FSCM Consultant Birmingham City Council / Axon | 2007 – 2008 SAP Business Engineer, FSCM Verizon Enterprise Solutions | April 2008 – April 2011 SAP Business Expert Accenture for BG Group | May 2011 – June 2011 Chief Executive Officer iNCUBhHUB & Brickonstruct, Ibadan | June 2019 – Present Business Engineer Spartan BizEng | June 2019 – Present PUBLIC SECTOR EXPERIENCE Deputy Chief of Staff & Acting Chairman, Oyo State Internal Revenue Service Oyo State Government | 2011 – 2015 Commissioner for Finance, Budget & Planning Oyo State Government | 2015 – June 2019 Chairman, 10-Man Ibadan Airport Upgrade Committee Oyo State Government | July 2024 – July 2026

“We just had a narrow escape from death few minutes ago because of the anyhowness of Nigerian officers. Our bus was hit by a tanker which was being chased by Vehicle Inspection Officers around the axis of Iponri, Alaka, Lagos (In front of the Leadway Pensure building). Everyone in our bus had to jump out of the bus and this led to people sustaining injuries from the pandemonium. This video is a snippet of the ugly incident but it captures the details…. 💔” - Lady says 🙆🏽‍♂️

Power Minister: Nigerians Begging Me To Slow Down Because ‘Freezers Are Freezing’ dailytrust.com/power-ministe…

BREAKING: “WE WON’T ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN” | Anambra Police Warn Against Efforts to Secure Release of Mother Accused of Abusing 7-Year-Old Daughter The Anambra State Police Command says it will not allow attempts to secure the release of a woman arrested over the alleged sexual abuse of her seven-year-old daughter and the alleged use of the child to produce adult content. Police spokesperson Tochukwu Ikenga said the command had seen reports that some people were contributing money to secure the woman’s release, warning that such efforts would not be allowed to succeed.

There is money and there is Northern Nigerian money 💰

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s 11-floor National Library headquarters in Abuja has remained unfinished for over 18 years

Haruna Hadi’s midfield display in the Lagos derby 😮‍💨

Nigeria Football Referees Association (NFRA) also needs TOTAL REFORM! This is @NigeriaPFL game between Kun Khalifat FC and Barau FC in Owerri. This is a terrible officiating. cc- @thenff @nra_nigeriarefs @FIFAcom @CAF_Online

Switching our focus to Saturday 👊

I have been building scenarios about what happens after 2027. What happens if Ruto gets a second term? What happens if we get fresh blood, say Sifuna? Or old blood that is not Ruto, say Kalonzo or Matiang'i? This is not a scaremongering exercise. Some people think nothing can get worse than it already is. Ten years ago, we started documenting the collapse of the Kenyan economy. Newspapers were awash with profit warnings from big corporates, and between 2016 and 2020 so many people lost their jobs. Many companies closed shop. Others fled a toxic business environment, high power costs, punitive taxes, and cheap Chinese imports. The COVID-19 pandemic bought Uhuru two vital years and let him finish his term as a "statesman." The lockdown absorbed his accumulated failures, and the handshake with Raila bought him more time. Otherwise, what Ruto experienced on June 24, 2024 would very likely have happened to Uhuru ahead of the 2022 election. Between Uhuru's exit and Ruto's takeover, you saw how busy the auctioneers' pages became, disposing of cars and household goods belonging to a middle class drowning in debt. Hear me out. I watched my friends get laid off, one by one. If 20 of my friends were employed in 2015, by 2020 nearly half had lost their jobs, and only a few had found another meaningful job or built a business with modest success. COVID-19 shaved off another five. And the thing about losing your job after 30 is that the chances of getting another one shrink with every passing minute. In between the end of COVID and Ruto’s four years, more friends have lost jobs, and only 2 or 3 in my closest circle, one can say, are doing relatively well. And we are not young. Nairobi, and Kenya generally, is deceptively vibrant on the surface. You could mistake us for a rich country. But beneath the smiles, people sleep hungry. Families are coping badly, adjusting to job losses and inflation while responsibilities keep piling up. I have seen marriages end purely on economic grounds. I have seen friends sink into depression. I have seen men and women become homeless, and others forced back to the village. Saddest of all, most millennials who made it were the first generation of money in their families, so going back home is a reversal of fortune no parent ever hoped for. In the past, when parents sent us food from the village, it was cultural, because fresh ethnic delicacies are hard to find in the city. If your Luo mother packed you omena, or my Kisii mother packed me millet flour and bitter vegetables, it was to make sure we ate the best from home. For the last ten years, those big buses from the village have carried food to Nairobi to help people survive the harsh times. It is a strange, informal system, cumulatively worth billions, and a survival mechanism for the city's poorest. And for the middle class. I do not remember a time in my adulthood when all of us were this broke. There is no longer a working friend to bail out the jobless one, and the few who are working are overburdened by black tax. I recently coined a word for the help we now extend to one another as friends and strangers: buddy tax. You wake up and your inbox already has ten requests. You are clutching at straws, and you have no one to bail you out yourself. Businesspeople will tell you how few people are buying. Many now sit on stranded goods and assets they cannot dispose of. Kenya being an African country, we stay quiet about it. Our economy has collapsed, but we have a backup: the culture of dependence. Nearly three-quarters of diaspora remittances go into helping family. Some of it is ordinary responsibility, a parent paying school fees or a medical bill. Everyone does that. But there is the extra burden of carrying relatives who, in a functional economy, would take care of themselves. Now every well-off adult has siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, colleagues and college friends to bail out. Ten years ago, black tax was maybe 5 to 10 percent. Now it has gone up by about 200 percent. They say you should not give a man fish; teach him to fish. Indeed, most families have spent their meagre resources on agents who ship a member off to the Gulf, if only to make them independent. But not many families have a loose Sh200,000 to Sh600,000 lying around. Many sell what little they own to raise it, and that is before counting the millions lost to Nairobi conmen. Some just grind harder, dreading every school opening, dreading disease, dreading any disaster that demands real money. Maybe it is only my friends and relatives going through A LOT. How are things on your end? How are you coping? With school fees? With medical bills? With the cost of living? What I know is that black tax cannot solve problems a government should solve. We live in a country where common public goods have been privatized. Good education is only available in private schools. Decent healthcare comes from private hospitals, while public ones operate in a highly politicized environment, caught between a transactional national government and counties sometimes run by governors who dropped out in Class Two. Security in some neighborhoods is outsourced to private firms. Public transport is private. All of it piles costs on citizens endlessly. Our parents survived because public school and public university, discriminatory as admission was, were affordable. Ruto slashed the money for secondary school students, and his university funding model was never going to work. That means more pressure on parents. Before we get to Ruto's weaknesses, we must admit how broken this country was before he inherited the mess. And sadly, he was uniquely unqualified to take us forward, because his personal ambition for wealth is opposed to the collective aspirations of Kenyans. The period between 2027 and 2032 is the critical phase of Project Kenya. Either we sink for good under a Ruto second term, or we start a path to recovery with whatever Plan B we can find. We had no room for error in 2017. We messed up big time, even after the Supreme Court tried to correct the blunder. Some Kenyans still voted the dynamic duo back in. Then 2022 was supposed to be a bridge into the future, and again, some Kenyans looked at Ruto and saw a man worth a chance. And now 2027 is upon us. The unvarnished truth is that a Ruto win- and he stands a chance of winning by any means necessary- is unfathomable. It would mean that he and Uhuru together condemned three generations of Kenyans to permanent poverty. That is saying something. Go broke in your 30s or 40s and see how hard it is to recover in a weak economy like ours. You simply waste away. That has been the fate of many Kenyans, especially those who graduated in the last twelve years. Beyond the speculation about our constitution, we will remain tied to useless projects that will never open up the economy and whose sole purpose is to line the pockets of Ruto and his financiers. , we are staring into an abyss.To rescue the economy, we have to think outside the box, and sadly, no presidential candidate has articulated a believable economic vision. Beyond#WANTAM We cannot sustain an economy where more than half of what we collect goes to debt, the next portion disappears into people's pockets, and whatever remains must compete against the needs of 55 million people. A Kalonzo presidency does not promise much. Maybe less corruption, and if he hires the right team, the economy can expand. As a positive, if moribund, force, he may at least let us heal at a psychic level, and feel safe with a man who will not lie to us unnecessarily or reach for brutal force. A Matiang'i presidency may promise Magufuli-style leadership, which will appeal to those who like that kind of thing. With the right ideas, it could work. With the wrong ideas, it would be a disaster. A Sifuna presidency promises a generational shift, as he would be our first millennial president. Sifuna is educated and inclined to respect human rights. With the right team, he would understand the needs of millennials, Gen Zs and those coming after. He is less drawn to shiny things, and I doubt he would oversee needless mega projects designed to fund himself or his next campaign. I am not naive enough to assume there would be no theft under him, but sometimes we are talking about scale. Some say the best president we ever had was Kibaki. There was corruption under Kibaki, certainly, and in 50 years of government service he was not the cleanest man. But he never amassed a fortune to match any of the other four presidents. What you notice is that Kenya grew in leaps and bounds under him. He gave us a hint of what happens when a president is less interested in accumulating personal wealth and more inclined to help the country, and when money, if it comes, comes second to his aspirations. Over to you

Pay or lose the spotlight! 30 out of the African Union's 55 member states default on their annual dues partly or completely each year, putting the AU in a perpetual financial bind and giving the AU a "do nothing" reputation when in fact the money is not there for programmes. But the AU's penalty for dues default is devilishly clever: a country's leader is not permitted to speak before the continental assembly! (And you know how the Big Guys relish the big conferences and addressing fellow leaders.)