The
VOX POPULI SACRUM
WEDNESDAY April 25, 2018
racle
Today
www.oraclenews.ng
ISSN: 2545-5869
VOL.3 No.16 N200
Ifeajuna – Time to recognise a sports legend
E
MANNUEL Arinze Ifeajuna is an enigma, little doubt that his name is mentioned in whispers, or sentences cut to exclude him, only to be continued, if they vilify him. There cannot be another Ifeajuna. Born in Onitsha, he attended Dennis Memorial Grammar School, DMGS, in his home town and displayed the characteristics that would later define his life. He trained in the high jump under his
THE ORACLE COMMENT games teacher, and he also took part in a protest that closed down the school for a term. He graduated from high school in 1951. The 1954 Nigerian Athletics Championships saw him establish himself among the nation’s best high jumpers. A jump of 6 foot 5.5 inches (1.97
m) meant Ifeajuna was chosen to represent his country at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, alongside Nafiu Osagie. Nigeria performed well internationally in the high jump in that period – Joshua Majekodunmi had been runner-up at the 1950 British Empire
Games, and three Nigerian jumpers made the top twenty at the 1952 Olympic high jump. At the 1954 Games in Vancouver, he competed wearing only his left shoe yet managed to clear 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m), which was both a Games record and a British Empire record
for the discipline. The resulting gold medal made him the first Black African to win at a major international sports competition. The high jump had an African sweep of the medals that year, with Uganda’s Patrick Etolu finishing behind Ifeajuna and Nigeria’s Nafiu Osagie taking third place – the only time that has happened in the history of the Games, in a sport considered so technical, that these
More confusion I on2ndNigerBridge
Cont’d on page 24
From JONATHAN AWANYAI, Asaba, CHUKS COLLINS, Awka, and IBE NWACHUKWU, Onitsha
•Concerns over financing •Project over politicised •No completion date •Site out of bounds to public
S work going on at the construction sites of the 2nd Niger Bridge? Yes. Is it possible to calculate work in percentages? Yes, but the controversies that approach introduces to an over-politicised project will not add anything. The campaigns are months away. It seems that some people realising that have re-opened the unending stories about the completion of the 2nd Niger Bridge. They have succeeded in dousing the proj-
Cont’d on page 2
• 2nd Niger Bridge as at June 2015, when work was stopped on the project. More photos on pages 41 & 42
Nnamdi Kanu: April 26 awaits Abaribe T HE countdown to Friday 26 April 2018 has begun for Senator Enyinnaya Harcourt Abaribe, representative of Abia South Senatorial District, Jewish religious leader High Priest, Emmanu El- Salom Oka BenMadu, and an accountant, Mr. Tochukwu Uchendu: they could be in jail on that date.
A challenge before them is to produce Nnamdi Kanu in court failing which Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja would decide whether or not to commit the trio – sureties to the ‘missing’ leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, to prison. The court said they should
be served with the order to enable them appear before it on April 26 to show cause why they should not be committed to prison over Kanu’s repeated failure to appear for continuation of his trial, or why the N100 million they individually de-
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posited to secure his bail should not be forfeited to the Federal Government. Alternatively, the court said the sureties were at liberty to produce the IPOB
Cont’d on page 2
Igwe Ojoto: Okafor heads to court