Bride Goes On Horse To Groom’s House, Asks For His Hand

INDORE: Rajni, a 25-year-old law student, dressed in best bridal finery, mounted a horse and took her baraat (marriage procession) to the groom’s house through her village. After an hour-long marriage procession and dancing onthe streets, she went to mandap (pandal) and asked the groom to marry her


Unbelievable though it may sound, but that is exactly what happened at a marriage in Satwara village of Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh.

The unique tradition — ‘Kanya Ghatari’ — which was practised by the Patidar community, wherein the bride takes her baraat to the groom’s place, had long been forgotten, was brought alive. Senior members of the community endorsed Rajni’s initiative to revive the age old tradition and lavished praise on her.

Rajni, who got married two days ago, initially felt a little awkward at the idea of riding a horse and taking the baraat to the groom’s place. “I realized that the idea was to empower women and this practice would certainly eradicate many evils in the society,” she said.

Normally, boys consider it their birth right to take out the baraat. But for Praveen Patidar, 30, a state government employee, seeing his wife coming to marry him on a horse was a matter of pride.

Groom’s father Ishwarlal Patel said that even on the wedding card that was printed a month ago, there was a message of women empowerment. He said his family wished that their daughter-in-law would take her baraat to their house.

About the tradition, he said first the bride was offered coconut by her parents. After completing the ritual, the girl mounted the horse and led the baraat from her house, which after passing fromthe narrow lanes of village, reached the groom’s place.

The girl then came up to the mandap (pandal) on the horse and proposed the groom, asking him whether he would marry her. Waiting family members of the groom welcomed the bride. Thereafter, the marriage was solemnized.

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Boko Haram Acquire Anti Aircraft Guns And Rocket Propelled Grenades In Nigerian Insurgency

The share volume of ammunition available to Boko Haram now forces most analyst to conclude that Nigeria is engaged in a full scale war of survival.
Extremist attack casualties are expected to rise as fighters now have access to sophisticated weaponry.

While Nigeria's military has fought in the past decade with heavily armed militants and criminal gangs operating in the creeks of its oil-rich southern delta, analysts and security official say those groups never had access to anti-aircraft weapons. 
Nor did these groups launch attacks overrunning military barracks or levelling towns.

Where extremists gathered these sophisticated weapons also remains unclear, though they have several means available to them.
A propaganda video released in March by Boko Haram, featuring its leader Abubakar Shekau, showed fighters gathered around weapons they said they stole from an attack on an army barracks.

Those weapons included what appeared to be heavy machine-guns, rocket-propelled grenades and possibly anti-aircraft weapons, as well as ammunition and brand-new bulletproof vests.

Another source of tactics and weapons may come from northern Mali, where Nigerian extremists fought along others.

"Boko Haram will also likely recruit militants who fought and obtained new skills from warfare in Mali," wrote analyst Jacob Zenn in a recent publication by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Army's West Point.

"The Boko Haram attack on an army barracks in Monguno ... , in which the militants mounted weapons on four-wheel-drive vehicles, and the discovery of improvised fighting vehicles in a raid on a Boko Haram hideout in Maiduguri ... suggest that Boko Haram has already learned new methods of fighting from the Islamist militants in Mali."

Meanwhile, arms are likely to continue to come out of Libya from heavily armed militias there, said analyst Zounmenou. Those arms can spread quickly through the Sahara Desert and into West Africa's Sahel to Nigeria, a major shipment stop for illegal weapons, he said.

While Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has spoken before about the need to control arms shipments throughout West Africa, the trade continues largely unstopped.

And as more of those weapons end up in the hands of Islamic extremists in Nigeria's north, more violence can be expected, said Zounmenou: "They are now really going to war."

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Timipre Sylva Arrested By EFCC

The former governor of Bayelsa state, Timipre Sylva, has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) today.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the anti-graft agency said it arrived at his No. 3, Niger Street, Maitama, Abuja home at about 10am, but were informed that Sylva was not in town. They insisted on conducting a search on the apartment, since they had a court warrant and eventually found him hiding.

“During the search, vital documents were obtained. Ironically, the ex-governor who was said to be out of town was later found hiding in a dingy corner in the upper chamber of his expansive mansion,” Wilson uwujaren, the commission’s spokesperson said in the statement.

“He was immediately whisked away and is currently being interrogated at the Abuja headquarters of the anti- graft agency. He is being grilled in connection with fresh evidence linking him with a bouquet of fraudulent transactions that borders on money laundering. Part of the new evidence includes a number of eye-popping real estate acquisitions in Abuja.

“The arrest of the former governor is sequel to his refusal to honour invitations by the Commission. Rather than appear before the EFCC, he got his lawyers to inform the Commission that he was unable to appear because he was sick, and hospitalised in Lagos. The lawyer had promised to appear with his client on May 7, 2013 but failed to do so.”

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Redeemers University Student Arrested For Death Of Suspected Gay Banker

Homicide detectives of the Lagos State Criminal Investigations Department, Panti, Yaba, have arrested an undergraduate of the Redeemers University, Ogun State, in connection with the brutal murder of a suspected gay banker, Adindu Ohamara.
According to sources, the banker was on April 9, found in a pool of his blood in his room, having been stabbed severally by the suspect.
Six persons were thereafter arrested in connection with the crime by detectives from the Homicide Unit of the State Criminal Investigations Department ,SCID,in Panti, Lagos State.
Some of the persons picked-up by the Police included, a sister of the deceased, Flora who regained her freedom on Wednesday.
DailyPost has gathered that detectives finally picked up the male student from the Redeemers University, located along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Ogun state who is now termed the prime suspect.
According to our sources, the prime suspect, name withheld, initially denied knowing the deceased while being drilled by Police detectives, but later admitted knowing the deceased. He however gave an alibi that he was reading with some of his colleagues at the university premises at the time of the murder.

The Police thereafter visited the university where the school authorities were said to have told them that the student was not anywhere near their premises at that material time.
The father of the suspect also told Police detectives that his son got home around 10p.m that day.
Late Ohamara, in his 30s, resides in a three-bedroom flat at 26 Obayan Street, Akoka with his elder sister, Flora and one Collins, an undergraduate of the University of Lagos and friend of the deceased who was squatting with them.
It was learnt that on the day Ohamara was killed, he had returned home from office with a stranger with whom he was suspected to have had a gay relationship with.
According to the security guard at the gate, Ohamara and the stranger arrived home in the deceased’s car.
It was also learnt that some of the persons earlier arrested in connection with the murder have identified the undergraduate as the stranger who returned home with Ohamara that night and disappeared before the severely-stabbed banker was discovered.

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May-D and P-Square reconcile, Features P-square In New Album

 Late August last year, pop singer Akinmayokun May D Awodumila got the shock of his life when he learnt he had been dropped from Square records (P-Square record label) due to irreconcilable differences, he screamed blue murder, threatened litigation and countered by launching his own outfit Confam Entertainment; releasing singles and videos. Today, however, these two camps may have reconciled.

Come May 10, this writer has learnt May D’s highly anticipated album will drop and it features PSquare in a powerful collaboration called You want to know me.

The 20 tracked album titled Chapter one also features Tu face in No Body, K-Switch and Olamide in Kigbe and then Davido in Ur Eyes.

May D will be launching his album on May 26 at a live concert in Abuja with Davido, 2face Idibia, Iyanya, Olamide, Jaywon, Reminisce, K-Switch and many others in performance.

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