THE GLITZ FROM THE ROYAL WEDDING OF OONI AND WURAOLA

Some of the sights at the wedding between the Oonirisa of Ile Ife; Oba Enitan Adeyeye and the new bride; Yeyeluwa of Ile Ife; Wuraola, now ongoing; are captured below:

WHY ONI OF IFE WON'T ATTEND HIS TRADITIONAL WEDDING TODAY

Inside the venue

While all roads lead to Benin City today for His Majesty, the Ooni of Ife; Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi's and his new bride, Wuraola Otiti Zynab Obanor's traditional wedding; the Ooni will not be present. According to tradition; the wife can only be brought to the king.

However; a strong delegation headed by the Ooni's dad is presently at the bride's family house in the heart of Benin.

Later on; the bride would be brought home to the palace in Ile Ife where the merry making would kick off till tomorrow when the proper party would hold at the Palace.

Meanwhile; the Ooni is only allowed to do the traditional wedding as his divorce with his ex wife; Bukky Bombata is yet to go through.

But the tradition of old still holds that Kings are entitled to many wives and Oba Adeyeye is no exception.

Delegation arriving

The newest royal couple

Benin traditional dancers welcoming the King's delegation

POPULAR SOUTH AFRICAN GAY SINGER DIES OF ANAL CANCER

Koyo Bala, the popular South African musician, socialite and member of the defunct gay musical group, 3Sum, has been reported to have lost his battle with cancer.

He was diagnosed of anal cancer in 2012 and had since been fighting it. The anal cancer, which he thought was ordinary pile at first came as a result of his active gay life. 

The 36 year old had been diagnosed HIV positive prior to the cancer. Though he thought he had won the battle against cancer along the way, but it came back, and this time, took his life.

It was reported that he remained strong and positive through it all.

LADAN SALIHU'S LEGACY SHINES BRIGHT AS FRCN WINS 4 AWARDS

The Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN in December won four of the five awards at the recently concluded Nigeria Media Merit Award, (NMMA) for the first time in history.

Of these categories, the federal government owned radio station won the Radio of the Year, a feat which came as a pleasant surprise to staff of the station and Nigerians at large. One of the criteria for the award was based on the station's dynamic coverage of the 2015 elections. Other categories won by the station include, Best Presenter, Best Producer and Best Reporter of the year. 

This historic feat will be incomplete without mentioning the former Director General, Ladan Salihu who was relieved of his post about two weeks ago. It will go down history that he was the one who helped the station achieve all these honours.

Ladan Salihu was however, happy to bow out, because according to him, he had attained the peak of his journalism career having been DG of such a big parastatal and leaving on a high note.

It will be of note to mention that the amazing transformation of the radio station which had been abandoned by previous heads of the organisation was completely transformed by him both infrastructurally and technically.

He built more studios, with state of the art equipment, trained staff to man these studios, and given the old and hitherto archaic FRCN a complete facelift such that the station can now compete with any other station in the world.

While other DGS of parastals complained of harassment, while some were roundly hated and criticised by their staff, the staff of the FRCN were full of praise for their ex-DG.

"The awards are indeed a manifestation of the DG's exemplary managerial style. He emphasised training, staff motivation and insisted on professional excellence being a professional himself." Declared an elated staff of the News Department of FRCN.

However one staff wondered why the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed did not grant the ex-DG the honour of presenting the awards to him personally and why the awards that were won on the 22nd of December 2015 are being celebrated now.

Many of the staff spoken to however  vowed to work with whoever becomes the new DG with the hope that he will carry on with Salihu's good works and what one of them terms "impeccable managerial skill".