Fellow Nigerians

Expert Enumerates Health Benefits of Coffee

2011-03-10T15:43:00.001-08:00

Expert enumerates health benefits of coffee

Written by Akin Adewakun Thursday, 10 March 2011

A cardiologist at the Lagos State University Hospital, Professor Jane Ajuluchukwu, has described as baseless the widely-held belief that coffee has no significant benefit to the human system, adding that there are immense health benefits in this brand of beverage, if moderately taken.

Ajuluchukwu, who is the co-ordinator of Ignite, a pan-African educational project aimed at enlightening the public on the importance and relationship between coffee and health, based on scientific facts and researches, explained that the initiative was put together to unravel some mysteries surrounding coffee.
“As researchers we serve as watch dogs. Through observational studies, we have discovered some facts with which we aim to empower people with adequate knowledge on coffee, ” she said.
According to her, about 146 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the U.S each year, nearly three times more than tea, adding that coffee also serves as America’s number one source of antioxidants with average consumption of 3.1 cups per day.
Besides, she stated, science has proved that coffee is good for stimulating mental alertness, improves cognitive function, decreases the risk of developing Parkison’s and Alzhemier’s diseases, lowers the risk of liver disease and helps reduce risk of type-2 diabetes. Other benefits, she stated, include: reducing the risk of developing colon cancer and lowering the risk of cavities.
“In the developed nations, there is an amazing level of coffee consumption. But back here, the first impression about coffee is caffeine, yet there is much that coffee has to offer if consumed in moderation,” she said.
She added that despite the fact that the world talked about coffee and its benefits, the subject had not elicited such passion in Nigeria, adding that one of the roles of the academia is to expand the frontiers of knowledge and help the people to better understand their environment.
She lamented the low level of literature and facts available to Nigerians on coffee and its impact on health, adding that, “the pan-African Ignite programme is very vital as it sets to provide Nigerians with proven facts and case studies and will create mass enlightenment on coffee and its health benefits.
According to her, “we want to know their fears concerning the beverage and proffer scientific answers and leave consumers to make choices. We want to examine the pros and cons of coffee and let people know that the beverage has numerous advantages if consumers are well informed about it,” she stated

Nigerian Clothes and Fabrics---Beautiful

2011-03-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

Beautiful attires. You can add your own after signing in.

POPULATION DENSITY

2011-02-17T17:31:00.001-08:00

NIGERIAN CLOTHES--BEAUTIFUL

2011-02-17T17:27:00.001-08:00

Nigeria--Population Density

2011-02-17T17:21:00.001-08:00

Population density in Nigeria

ANALYSIS OF NIGERIAN LEGISLATORS' PAY

2010-12-17T07:23:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 16, 2010
Compared to Nigerian legislators, Indian lawmakers are paupers
NNAEMEKA MERIBE and GBENGA ADENIJI

A comparative analysis of Nigerian legislators' earnings and those of other countries reveals that the former can pay many of their counterparts in other countries and still remain very rich, NNAEMEKA MERIBE and GBENGA ADENIJI write.

L-R: Hon. Speaker, House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, Senate President, David Mark

An Indian lawmaker needs to work for at least 49 years to earn the annual salary of a Nigerian senator. A lawmaker in India earns $23,988 (N3.7m) per annum while a Nigerian senator earns $1.2m (N182m) per annum. A monthly breakdown shows that while an Indian lawmaker earns $1,999 (N305, 058) per month, a Nigerian senator earns $ 99,167(N15.18m) per month.

The Indian lawmakers' pay is also a far cry from what members of the House of Representatives earn. THE PUNCH reported last week that each member of the House of Representatives takes home N10.59m every month. Thus, a federal lawmaker in India will work for at least 34 years to earn the N127m annual salary of a member of the House of Representatives.
In fact, the pay of Indian lawmakers was only increased to the current level in August, after the legislators complained that their earlier monthly pay of $345 (N52, 648) was inadequate.
The jumbo pay of Nigerian lawmakers has been in the front burner in recent times, with the Nigerian public criticising it as outrageous. It is doubtful if the salaries and entitlements of National Assembly members had ever raised as much dust.
It was the legal icon, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN) who first drew attention to the abnormality in August when he delivered a lecture on "Legislating for Common Good: Contemporary Issues & Perspective" during the celebration of the 47th birthday of the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele.
Sagay told his obviously stunned audience that in spite of Nigeria's position as one of the world's poorest nations, with a meagre per capita income of $2,249 per annum as against $46,350 of the US, the nation's federal lawmakers were the highest paid in the world, with each earning more than President Barack Obama of the US.
And the constitutional lawyer had facts and figures to back his statement. He said that a Nigerian Senator, in 2009 earned N240m in salaries and allowances while his House of Representatives counterpart earned N203.8m.
With the dust raised by Sagay's revelation yet to clear, the Governor of the Central Bank, Mallam Lamido Sanusi, upped the ante while delivering a lecture, late November at the convocation ceremony of Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State. He disclosed that 25 per cent of the overhead of the nation's budget goes to the NASS.
Sanusi's disclosure was like a blow below the belt for members of NASS. They accused Sanusi of inciting the public against them with false figures and summoned him to appear before them on different days to clear the air on his statement and also apologise to them.
But the turn of events did not rattle Sanusi, as he stood his ground when he appeared before them, insisting that he got his figures from the right source and that there was no need for him to apologise since he did nothing wrong.
But a critical analysis of the lawmakers' pay will reveal a huge disparity between their pay and the N18,000 (monthly) national minimum wage which state governments are yet to implement.
The least paid worker in the country, at the contentious N18,000 minimum wage earns N234,000 per annum if the 13th month extra pay is added. This means that the least paid worker in the country earns just 0.13 per cent of a senator's salary. Such a worker will also need to work for at least 777 years to earn a senator's N182m annual pay.
A further breakdown reveals that a senator earns N498, 630. 137 a day, N20,776.28 per hour and N346.270 per minute. In other words, a senators daily pay is two times more than the annual pay of the least paid Nigerian worker. A senator's hourly pay is also more than the monthly pay of the least paid worker in the country.
Similarly, the least paid Nigerian worker earns just 0.18 per cent of a member of the House of Representatives' pay. Such a worker will also need to work for at least 542 years to earn the N127m annual salary of a member of the House of Representatives.
A member of the House of Representatives earns N347, 945 per day, N14, 497 per hour and N241 per minute. In other words, the daily pay of a member of the House of Representatives is more that the annual pay of the least paid Nigerian worker. Also, the monthly pay of the least paid Nigerian worker is slightly above the hourly pay of a member of the House of Representatives.
A comparison with the pay of five other countries reveals that the pay of Nigerian lawmakers is indeed outrageous.
The minimum wage in the United States is $1,257 (N191,667) and a US lawmaker earns $15,080 (N2.3m) per month. This shows that the least paid worker in the US earns 8.67 per cent of the total pay of the country's lawmaker. Thus, a US legislator will need to work for over six years to earn the annual pay of a Nigerian legislator. The US lawmaker will also need to work for over four years to earn the annual pay of a Nigerian House of Representative member.
In the United Kingdom, a lawmaker earns $8,686(N1.3m) monthly while the gross national minimum wage is $1,883 (N283, 333) per month. Thus, the percentage of a UK lawmaker's pay that is the salary of the least paid UK worker is 21.68 per cent. This, like that of the US (8.67 per cent) is much higher than Nigeria's 0.13 per cent/ 0.18 per cent.
Also, Nigerian lawmakers earn higher than their counterparts in Sweden. With a monthly pay of $7,707 (N1.2m), a lawmaker in Sweden will need to work for over 12 years to earn a Nigerian senator's annual pay of N182m, and for at least nine years to earn the N127m annual pay of a House of Representatives member.
In France, the minimum wage is $1,805 (N275,433) per month and a legislator earns $6,754 (N1.03m) monthly. Thus the least paid worker in France earns 26.73 per cent of the pay of a lawmaker in that country as against Nigeria's 0.13 per cent/ 0.18 per cent.
Like Nigerian lawmakers, Kenyan lawmakers are also believed to be greedy. In July, the Kenyan public protested against a hike in the salary of the legislators. The lawmakers hiked their salary to $14,583 (N2.2m) per month. And with the minimum wage in the country at $69.17 (N10,555) per month, the least paid worker in the country earns 0.43 per cent of a legislators pay. But this is still better than Nigeria's 0.13 per cent/ 0.18 per cent.
Many Nigerians have been speaking against the jumbo pay of the lawmakers. On Tuesday, Lagos lawyer and human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana, while addressing the members of the Edo State branch of the University of Ibadan Alumni Association, called on Nigerians to resist the jumbo pay.
A former member of the National Assembly, Prof. Sola Adeyeye, in an interview with THE PUNCH, said that the nation was beset with the calamity of legislation being turned into "legislooting."
He lamented that the Nigerian politicking has become a brazen exercise in elite parasitism. He said, ''Statecraft has degenerated into do-or-die power merchandising that turns senators into "stealators" and representatives into "representa-thieves!"
Also, President of the Campaign for Democracy, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin was of the belief that the lawmakers had not justified the pay. Speaking in an interview with THE PUNCH, she called for a constitution-backed downward.
Perhaps, what these Nigerians want is what lawmakers in Venezuela did in December 2009. They passed a law prohibiting the President, judges and top government officials from earning above $6,750 (N1.03m) a month.

Behold A Worthy Nigerian

2010-12-13T11:34:00.001-08:00

Behold, school proprietor who never went to school

| Print | E-mail

Written by Dipo Laleye Monday, 13 December 2010

Danladi Yau

Dipo Laleye writes that a man who never went to school has become so passionate about education that the school he established is adjudged to be one of the largest in Minna.

At 11 years of age, Danladi Yau, was brought to Minna from Kano by his parents to learn the Is-lamic holy book, the Quran, a practice that is commonly called ‘almajirinshi’ in the northern part of the country.
The almajiri have no other business than to learn the Quran and after graduating and regaining freedom from their Mallams, they are expected to return to their parents though most of them refuse to do so preferring to make a permanent home in the environment of their former ‘schools’.

The almajiri have, over the years, turned out to be a nuisance to political leaders in the north and the nation as a whole and an embarrassment to adherents of Islam as they are always roaming the streets begging for survival. They eat whatever they could lay their hands on to keep body and soul together. It is not unusual to find the almajiri working on the farms of their Mallams yet, they would not eat from the harvest.
Yau is now 40 years old and has since graduated as an almajiri.
He thereafter went into trading, selling chickens. At a time, he hawked iced cream and other related products. Apart from this and having been well versed in the Quran, he worked as a mallam assisting people with prayers to overcome the challenges of life.
Yau later settled down and became a family man. Though he continued to trade in fowls, he abandoned hawking of ice cream.
Before then, Yau had vowed that since he didn’t have the opportunity of attaining western education, he would do all that he could to ensure his children did not suffer the same fate.
“I took my children to one school ( he did not name the school) and at the end of the first term, I was asked to pay their school fees. I pleaded with the headmaster who insisted that if I could not pay the fees, I should withdraw them from the school” adding that “education here is not free”.
“When my plea fell on deaf ears, I felt angry and withdrew my children from the school but not before telling the headmaster that ‘one day, I will employ you and pay your salary’”,Yau declared.
That was the turning point in his life as he withdrew his children from the school and went back home to think of the next step to take.
According to him, “I later decided to turn my room to a school. I started with my four children and two teachers who taught them”.
Miraculously, Yau’s school continued to grow in size and population such that within four years of its establishment, the school had a population of 2,150 pupils and 71 teachers making it one of the largest private schools in Minna, the Niger State capital.
The school was later renamed Kowa Comprehensive High School and has been attracting the attention of educationists from within and outside the state because of the background of its proprietor.
Not forgetting what led him into establishing the school, Yau’s school fees are low when compared to what is obtainable in private schools in and around Minna and Niger State as whole.
“I think this is the only way I can help parents who cannot afford the high fees of some schools in the state”.
Despite the low fees charged by the school, the proprietor said that he had been partly responsible for the fees of about 200 pupils who are either orphans or indigents.
“I am annoyed that I did not go to school so, I am prepared to help in whatever way to see that our children go to school”.Alhaji Yau reiterated.
Kowa Comprehensive Primary school under the proprietorship of Alhaji Yau has also been very consistent in the payment of salaries and allowances of its teaching and none teaching staff.
“I cannot say I pay the best salary in the state among other private schools. What I know is that I pay all my teachers their salaries either on the 24th or 25th of every month and they have not been complaining”.
Investigations showed that over N1.8m is paid as monthly salaries, a development that might have been responsible for the slow pace of expansion work at the school’s permanent site.
However, one interesting thing about Alhaji Yau is that despite the fact that he never went to conventional school even for one day, he is now able to read and write.
He said: “I don’t know how it happened. I just find out that I can read and write but I still plan to go to school so that I will be in a position to discuss intelligently like others, I also want to be computer literate”.
Some members of the National Assembly recently paid a visit to the school where they met Alhaji Danladi in his well furnished office. After going round the school, they expressed their satisfaction with what they saw and promised to assist him to improve on the physical infrastructure and other facilities in the school.
“Since they made that promise over a year ago, I have not seen anybody” he said.
Similarly, Governor Muazu Babangida Aliyu of Niger State has appreciated the contribution of the proprietor to the educational development of the state with a pledge to give scholarship to some of the students in the secondary school wing of the institution. This promise has also remained on the drawing board as officials of the ministry of education who are supposed to take action have not done so.
In this regard, Alhaji Yau stated, “Government should assist people like us who are trying to help the society. But the situation is not so. It is only those who have people in high places or are well connected, that are being assisted, the society cannot grow with this type of attitude”.
He, however, commended the Niger State government for its free education policy which he said if religiously pursued, would lead to the rapid educational development of the state.

Kowa Comprehensive High School

But Alhaji Yau believes that school inspectors are not doing their jobs as expected and therefore recommended that committees made up of non civil servants should be set up by the governor to monitor schools and report directly to the governor.

By so doing, he argued, the governor would be availed of the true situation of things in all schools in the state which will also afford the government the opportunity to take necessary actions to put infrastructural facilities in good shape.
However, it is not only in the area of education that Alhaji Yau has been assisting the people of Minna.
When the price of rice became prohibitive about a year ago, Alhaji Yau intervened by personally travelling to Lagos to purchase trailer loads of rice which he sold at reduced rates to force down the prices of the commodity.
Similarly, he went to Obajana cement factory in Kogi State to purchase truck loads of cement for sale at reduced cost when the price of cement also skyrocketed. With the intervention by Yau, shylock traders in the state have been forced to bring down the prices of their commodities to make them affordable to the average citizen.
“I did this because I believe that some people are just taking undue advantage of our people. Somebody must come to their rescue.I did so not to make profit but to make the people happy” Alhaji Yau pointed out.
He reasoned that though everywhere is home, parents should still allow their children to know their roots.
“People should take their children to their places of origin so that when they pass on their children will know where they came from and can trace members of their families”, he concluded.

Palm Oil Good for Heart

2010-11-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

Palm Oil Good For Heart

| Print | E-mail

Written by Dr Abiodun Adeoye Saturday, 09 October 2010

Compliance to dietary advice is difficult worldwide. Even among the medical elite with vast knowledge on the need for healthy diet for the heart, very few practise it. It is almost like “do what I say; do not do what I do.” A colleague said “For most of us, we feel a certain twinge of guilt every time we eat a really fatty or greasy piece of food, as we know that it is increasing our risk of suffering from a heart attack… but it tastes so good.”
I agree fat meal tastes well but let us endeavour to stick to heart friendly diet.
Whether vegetarian or no vegetarian, most of us consume large quantity of oil per day. Most of the oil contain large percentage of saturated fatty acid that increases bad cholesterol and reduces good cholesterol in the body which predisposes to heart diseases such as heart attack. While most of the oil will fail heart friendliness test, our old palm oil will scale the test with ease. Contrary to belief that red oil (palm oil) is not good for the heart, there are a lot of researches that proved beyond reasonable doubt that it prevents cardiovascular diseases.
Palm oil
Palm oil is produced from the fruit of the elaeis guineensis. It is a vegetable oil, not an animal or dairy product, and, therefore, does not contain high cholesterol. Palm oil sometimes is confused with palm kernel oil, but is different. Palm oil is derived from the fleshy part of the palm fruits, while palm kernel oil is derived from the seed or the kernel.
Palm kernel oil and palm oil are two different oils with very distinct fatty acid composition. This explanation may not be necessary for some of us that once lived in the villages but the current generation might not have seen a palm fruit before.

Palm oil can be classified as both saturated and non-saturated fat. That saturated fat is bad for the body depends on the type. Saturated fat in red oil is palmitic saturated fatty acid which does not increase the body cholesterol level. Red oil contains a mixture of saturated fatty acids (51 per cent), mono-unsaturated fatty acids (30 per cent), poly-unsaturated fatty acids (11 per cent) and a whole spectrum of anti-oxidative carotenoids (vitamin A), tocopherols and tocotrienols (vitamin E) as major constituents.

Palm oil is trans-fat-free. It does not need to go through the hydrogenation (hardening) process. Trans-fatty acid has been shown to lower the good cholesterol and increase the bad cholesterol. In comparison, most vegetable oils (corn oil, soy oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, etc) require hydrogenation (hardening) of oil, hence the high concentration of trans-fatty acid.

Benefits of palm oil
•It does not promote the formation of plaques in the arteries. Atherosclerosis is the thickening and hardening of the walls of the arteries. Fatty deposits or plaques are made up of mainly fats and cholesterol. Atherosclerosis results in the narrowing of the lumen of the arteries, thus inhibiting the flow of blood.

•Vitamin E in red oil diet inhibits platelets (blood cells that aid blood clot formation) from sticking together. This high content of tocotrienols (Vitamin E) is very potent anti-oxidants. If a tissue, such as the heart, is starved of oxygen, this condition is termed ischemia. Even short periods of ischemia can cause large amounts of cell damage. If the tissue is re-oxygenated, this process is called reperfusion. In many cases, the sudden supply of oxygen to cells that have been deprived of it causes further damage. This damage during reperfusion of a tissue or organ can be reduced by the use of certain antioxidants.

•Palm oil diet either increases the production of a hormone that prevents blood-clotting (prostacyclin) or decreases the formation of a blood-clotting hormone (thromboxane).

•The high vitamin A (carotenoid) content of red oil is 300 times higher than those of tomatoes in equivalent amount. Vitamin A aids good vision.

Warnings
•I want to plead with some red oil sellers that adulterating it should please stop. All those things added to it negate its benefits.

•In cooking with red oil, please stop bleaching it. The bleaching destroys all the good nutrients in the oil and converts good cholesterol to bad cholesterol. If your reason of bleaching is to prevent the oil from “sleeping,” use your hot plate or burning stove to wake soup up the following morning.

•Limit other oil and use red oil as the people of old age did and enjoyed healthy life.

•Be moderate in consumption.
Till next week, maintain a healthy heart.