Chaos unfolded at Old Trafford yesterday as anti-ownership protests by Manchester United fans forced the postponement of Sunday’s Premier League game against Liverpool.
Hundreds of fans stormed the pitch just hours before the scheduled start to protest against the Glazer family ownership and their plans to join the breakaway European Super League (ESL).
As a result, the match on Sunday that was due to start at 4.30pm local time (7.30pm UAE) was postponed due to safety concerns.
United and Liverpool players were unable to travel to the stadium where supporters and police clashed.
Although the crowds were later dispersed, United said the game was postponed “due to safety and security considerations around the protest” after discussions with police, authorities and the league.
“Our fans are passionate about Manchester United, and we completely acknowledge the right to free expression and peaceful protest,” United said in a statement. “However, we regret the disruption to the team and actions which put other fans, staff, and the police in danger. We thank the police for their support and will assist them in any subsequent investigations.”
The Premier League, which was yet to announce a new date for the match, expressed concern.
“The security and safety of everyone at Old Trafford remains of paramount importance,” the Premier League said in a statement.
“We understand and respect the strength of feeling but condemn all acts of violence, criminal damage and trespass, especially given the associated COVID-19 breaches. Fans have many channels by which to make their views known, but the actions of a minority seen today have no justification.
“We sympathise with the police and stewards who had to deal with a dangerous situation that should have no place in football.”
The postponement meant Manchester City have to wait to lift the title. If second-placed United had lost the game against Jurgen Klopp’s team, league leaders City would have won the Premier League crown.
The Press Association reported that some protesters gained access to the ground via the Munich Tunnel, after pushing down barriers and despite the presence of security guards.
A protest was planned outside the ground at 2pm UK time, with fans arriving at least an hour before.
Many fans already had reservations about the Glazer family ownership and plans for ESL proved to be the tipping point. In a rare public statement, United co-chairman Joel Glazer apologised to fans for the breakaway tournament.
“You made very clear your opposition to the European Super League, and we have listened. We got it wrong, and we want to show that we can put things right,” he had said.
“Although the wounds are raw and I understand that it will take time for the scars to heal, I am personally committed to rebuilding trust with our fans and learning from the message you delivered with such conviction.”
Thousands thronged onto the Milan streets yesterday as Inter claimed a first Serie A title in 11 years to end rivals Juventus’ nine-year reign.
Antonio Conte’s side clinched their 19th Scudetto after Atalanta drew 1-1 at Sassuolo to leave the ‘Nerazzurri’ 13 points clear with four games remaining.
Conte had started Juve’s record run, winning the first three titles in a streak that stretched from 2012 to 2020.
The 51-year-old took over Inter in 2019 and lifted the trophy against their bitter rivals after finishing second last season.
“This triumph is one of the biggest achievements in my career,” said Conte, who also won the Premier League with Chelsea in 2017.“It wasn’t an easy choice for me to go to Inter, at a time when the team wasn’t used to winning. They were also the direct rival of Juventus, my former club.”
Inter are now the second most successful team in Italy, one league success ahead of bitter city rivals AC Milan’s 18, but still some way short of Juve’s 36.
The Lombardy side had not won the title since Jose Mourinho’s historic Champions League, Serie A and Coppa Italia treble in 2010.
Their last trophy was the Coppa Italia in 2011 and they missed out on the Champions League for six seasons before Luciano Spalletti took them back to Europe’s top club competition in 2018.
Conte is the 13th coach since Mourinho to sit on the Nerazzurri bench and the club has changed hands twice over the past decade.
It is unclear how a change of name will boost the country’s counter-insurgency effort in the Northeast. Renaming the operation against Boko Haram is the latest move by the Nigerian Army in an anti-terrorism war that has gone on for more than 10 years. The army leadership may know something the public does not know about the effect of a change of name on fighters, which is yet to be seen.
The renaming is aimed at “having an army that is repositioned to professionally defeat all adversaries in a joint environment,” according to a statement by Director Army Public Relations, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Yerima. The army “needs to re-align for better efficiency,” he said.
Operation Lafiya Dole, launched in 2015, is now Operation Hadin Kai, the army announced on April 30. The Hausa expression Lafiya Doye means peace by all means. Hadin Kai, another Hausa term, means cooperation/ unity. Before Operation Lafiya Dole, there was Operation Zaman Lafiya, a Hausa term for peace.
The previous emphasis on peace is ironic because the geopolitical zone has not known peace for more than a decade. This means the army failed to achieve the stated goal. The zone comprises six states: Bauchi, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Gombe and Yobe. Now the emphasis is on cooperation and unity. It remains to be seen if this new focus will result in peace.
The new Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, believes “the complete defeat of insurgency is a process that requires the participation of the entire nation using all elements of national power,” the statement added. The question is: If national power means state capacity, how can an ill-equipped military defeat the insurgents? It has been established that the country’s military is ill-equipped.
The army needs to adequately equip the fighters. That is a major challenge. It is more important to make the fighters prepared for the operation than change its name. Indeed, the operation may not need a formal name. There is no point renaming the operation when the fighters lack adequate weaponry.
Another challenge facing the army is low morale among troops. When the fighters are well equipped, and well taken care of, they will have the confidence necessary to win the war.
The army leadership should pay more attention to tackling the challenges that hinder the success of the war on terror. Renaming the operation without addressing the more fundamental issues is cosmetic.
When the Owu chief foisted the EFCC on the nation, many hailed him as a moral arbiter, a secular priest with the anointing oil to wither the itchy finger of the mighty.
The pious hailed, and they could find a place in scripture to buoy him. After all, in the Old Testament, the prophet Zechariah invoked Jehovah’s curse on the house of the thief.
Someone asked us for restraint. He is dead now, but he must squirm in triumph in the grave. Rotimi Williams had challenged it in court and noted that we cannot fight corruption as revenge. And, in any case, where was its place in the constitution?
We have seen the fight on corruption become an onslaught either for one man, against one man, against a political party, a sword of menace, a populist piece of meat in the tiger’s cage. It has often turned into an intrigue in Abuja, whether it was to browbeat a fellow party chieftain or to make a Magu turn from a slobbering flatterer with an idolater’s badge of the president to a wimp besieged.
Professor Itse Sagay (SAN) warned not long ago that the attorney general is trying to upend the war on corruption into his personal moral fiefdom.
So, there. We have had a few scapegoats. A governor here, an IG there, a few business perverts. But for most part, the war on corruption is like a farce mocking corruption on an elaborate stage. It claims victories that we cannot even call pyrrhic, since there are not real victories but mockeries of the overcomer. Just like the Roman leader Caligula, who wanted to distract his people and get home approval in his reign of profligacy and sexual orgies. He decided to invade Britain as a prize since even the great Augustus could not. On the verge of battle, he retreated and conned his people by marching into Rome with his own soldiers decked as prisoners of war and his people hailed him as a war hero.
The EFCC made the Nigerian thief into the Igbo proverb popularised in Achebe’s Things fall Apart. They learn to fly with our money without perching. The EFCC keeps shooting and missing. The war has even morphed into a game of an unspoken alloy and ally between the judiciary and the federal government, so a case can become an eternal song like the case that never ends from generation to generation in Charles Dickens’ novel, The Bleak House.
What is wrong? We have tried to make the fight of corruption into a sort of martial presence. It is an overhang from the military era. For the most part, it runs against the gain of a federal constitution. Hence this essayist supports the step by the man who bears the payload of Lagos in his small frame, The BOS of Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu for setting up an anti-corruption agency backed by law.
“We believe that this law will not only ensure accountability of public funds, responsibility of public office but also promote dialogue among public officers to keep the trust of the people…” noted Gov. Sanwo-Olu.
Some have railed at the law as a dig on Abuja and a shield of Lagos bigwigs. If we must run a federal system, let us do it. Corruption fight is not oil, and it does not belong on the exclusive list. Why should the centre think it has moral authority over the states? What makes them holier? After all, we have seen in the intrigues and infighting over the EFCC that the hands of the priest are not better than the hypocritical character Teribogo in Soyinka’s new novel, Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth. Or Brother Jero. They lay claim to equity, but where are their clean hands?
The fight on corruption was taken as harmless at first, but gradually, like the Rhinoceros in Eugene Ionesco’s play, everyone becomes a rhino and loses their own personality.
We need to hark back to Rotimi’s William’s wisdom when he first challenged it. Some who say it is primed to save a man only look at the moment. Democracy is not a system for a day, it is for centuries, a system of laws and not of men. To federalise the fight is to give it back to the people.
The fight against corruption is also part of the larger current of a populist trend today. In the legislative sphere, the lawmakers are angling for not only freedom to make laws but also money to be free. In a democracy, your major source of strength is your finance base. If we want to federalise anti-corruption war, we should also support free legislatures, so the executives do not hold their purse strings.
The judicial arm also deserves same, and the JUSUN strike hits at the heart of this. When a court does not need a chief executive and the assembly can account for its own money, nobody has a power to steal with impunity.
But when we subject the war to the peccadillos of one man in the centre or an agency, we don’t have anti-corruption. We have dictatorship. We are not running a totalitarian state. We are running a republic.
The Owu chief was very clever when he started it. He looked for a big fish, and it had to be a police chief. He appointed a junior police officer to squelch his former oga. It was a dramatic episode in Nigerian history. It had the ingredients of great theatre: suspense, overthrow of mores, surprise of outcome.
It is an irony that the police have been used to prosecute the war. The same police have become the punching bag of federalist fighters today. The same police are on the exclusive list. A clamour for state police has drowned the land. In this day of the breakdown of law and order, we are saying that we need each state to own their security. It was resisted for a long time. We are growing close to a national consensus on state police now.
The same should apply to the anti-corruption war. We build an institution to save a system, not to coddle a few. Even if they save a few for the present, we cannot elevate one person’s hatred for a generation’s loss. The white made a few laws to protect the white man and white woman from the black man. One of them is the divorce law. It is the whites who benefit from them more today. Once a law is just, it will save the people. When the US said all men were created equal, they meant white men. Today, George Floyd’s family appropriated that declaration for all humans.
Lagos has always been the lab rat of Nigeria’s democracy, just like New York and California in the United States. The revenue system, the local government order, the search to make electric power broken into parts, etc, all began here in Lagos. Lagos is putting its fingers in the fire again, and this time to burnish our moral fibre.
If the problem with Nigeria is about leadership, as Achebe noted, it is about leadership of values. We cannot do that when we enthrone values with Czars instead of democrats.
Helen Prest’s other beauty
Helen Prest-Ajayi
Many remember her as beauty, one of Nigeria’s belles who took home the prized trophy of Miss Nigeria. She became a wife and mother and moved out of the spotlight. It seems she does not want to be the lady who is known as the pretty face or the curves of seduction for memory. Or what some with mischief might call femme fatale. She challenged herself and has written a book, not about fashion or how to make your skin glow for your man. It is a book ambitiously titled, A Complete English Grammar Guide. Helen Prest Ajayi pays attention to some of the nuances of grammar as she explains the basic errors of tenses and how to make them right.
A train loaded with water pipes heading to Zaria from Lagos derailed on Saturday evening at Unguwa Kanawa in Kaduna North local government area of Kaduna State.
Kaduna Police Command spokesman, ASP Mohammed Jalige, who confirmed the incident said, the train developed some faults and derailed.
The Department of State Services (DSS) has warned individuals and groups whose utterances and actions threaten the peace and sovereignty of the country.
Public Relations Officer, DSS National Headquarters, Abuja, Dr Peter Afunanya, in a statement on Sunday, said deliberate machinations by subversive and hostile groups whose agenda is to throw the country into anarchy to serve the interests of their sponsors would no longer be tolerated.
It reads: “The Department of State Services (DSS) hereby condemns the unsavoury statements by misguided elements who have continued to threaten the government, sovereignty and corporate existence of this country.
“Notable are the unnecessary vituperations and activities of some religious and past political leaders who have either called for forceful change of government or mass action against it.
“It has been established that the main objective for these is to cause a disintegration of the country.
“It is unfortunate that those in the forefront of this are respectable individuals who should be patriotic and not allow their personal ambitions to ruin the nation.
“The Service has also noted their desperation and penchant to collaborate with external forces and influences against Nigeria.
“They are reminded that even though democracy offers free speech, it does not give room to reckless pronouncements capable of undermining security. It is instructive to note that the ballot box remains the vehicle of change in a democracy.
“In this regard, self-centered individuals and groups are warned to stop engaging in acts inimical to the peace and sovereignty of this nation.
“In the same manner, influential personalities should be sensitive to the emerging situations and guard against divisive and inciting utterances that may cause a breakdown of law and order.
“Recently, the Service invited and cautioned some persons who deniably recounted their earlier statements or said they were quoted out of context.
“The public should be wary of such individuals and their co-travellers who, incite them in the open but, turn in the secret to retrieve their words after they had caused the damage.
“While the Service reaffirms its unambiguous support to an indivisible, indisolluble and united Nigerian State in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, it will no longer tolerate deliberate machinations by subversive and hostile groups whose agenda is to throw the country into anarchy so as to serve the interests of their sponsors. Consequently, the Service is assiduously working with other security and law enforcement agencies to ensure the maintenance of peace and internal security of the country.”
Manchester United’s game against Liverpool was postponed after about 200 fans broke into Old Trafford to protest against the Glazer family’s ownership of the club.
The game was scheduled to kick off at 16:30 WAT on Sunday.
According to report, this may be due to issues surrounding the European Super League announced by Top clubs in Europe
2. El Clasico: Barcelona v Real Madrid (18 October 2019)
The match between two fiercest rivals in Europe, Barcelona v Real Madrid was scheduled for 26 October, 2019 but because of days of protests and fears over civil unrest in Barcelona, the game was postponed to 18 of December. The civil unrest leaves nine Catalan separatist leaders jailed
Hundreds of thousands of people waving pro-independence flags and chanting “freedom for political prisoners” took part in marches across Catalonia. The protest recorded at least 96 people were hurt across the region.
3. Monaco vs Nice (Thursday 06 December 2018)
The derby clash between former Arsenal team-mates Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira go head to head as managers of the two clubs put on ghost.
The protest was in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed fuel taxes and the additional need for police resources. This led to the decision to postpone some games. The following games were rescheduled by football body in France: PSG’s home game against Montpellier, Toulouse and Lyon, St Étienne and Marseille.
4. Tottenham vs Everton (AUGUST 11, 2011)
On August 11, 2011, riots in London forced Tottenham’s opening English Premier League match with Everton to be postponed.
The Tottenham Hotspurs management said: “Following ongoing discussions with the necessary authorities regarding this weekend’s Premier League home match against Everton, it has now been confirmed that this fixture will be postponed due to safety concerns relating to infrastructure of the High Road and access to the stadium caused by riots.”
5. Catania and Palermo (03 February 2007)
On February 3, 2007, football was halted in Italy after a police officer was killed when fans rioted at a match.
This prompt the Italian soccer federation to postpone all matches for the weekend.
The 2019 general elections recorded the lowest voter turnout in the history of the country’s democracy as only 30 percent (56 million) out of over 80 million Nigerians who collected their voter cards, actually voted, The Election Network has stated.
It stated that Nigerians were stalled from exercising their civic rights to vote by a number of factors like administrative shortcomings, intimidation, and violence, with violence standing out.
It further noted that between 2003 and 2019, over 1,932 electoral-violence related deaths were recorded with 626 of these deaths occurring in 2019 alone.
The Editor of the Election Network, Asari Ndem, who made these known while addressing journalists at its event in Abuja, urged policy makers and other stakeholders in the electoral process to ensure passage of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, National Electoral Offences Commission Bill, to ensure Nigerian are able to vote anywhere they are, among other recommendation.
She said: “The 2019 elections were a setback for Nigeria’s electoral and democratic framework. Officially, over 80 million Nigerians collected their voter cards from INEC but only about 30 percent of those people voted during the elections, the lowest recorded voter turnout in the history of Nigeria’s democracy.
“We wanted to understand why this had happened, to enable us make submissions to policymakers on how this level of failure can be avoided in coming elections. So, we decided to talk to the people.
“To show the human impact of electoral deficiencies on average Nigerians, The Election Network produced a documentary titled ‘Left Behind.’
“In this documentary, we interviewed Nigerians who were unable to or chose not to vote during the 2019 elections. We found that these Nigerians were stalled by factors like administrative shortcomings, intimidation, and violence. But what stood out the most is violence.
“Between 2003 and 2019 alone, over 1,932 electoral-violence related deaths were recorded, with 626 of these deaths occurring in 2019 alone.
“To paraphrase one of our expert interviewees, we attribute the low voter turnout to voter apathy but what really exists is voter fear; fear of intimidation and violence.
“The presence of heavy military and police personnel in certain regions aggravated this fear and prevented people from voting. In the 2019 general elections, there were at least 13 incidences of electoral violence as a result of military presence at polling units.
“Other barriers to voting were technical and administrative issues like the failure of card readers, and the lack of provisions for people living with disabilities.”
Ndem added: “In light of these findings, we are making the following proposals for Electoral reform: The Electoral Act Amendment Bill, when passed, will help put in check several irregularities but more importantly, give way for the full implementation of electronic voting during elections.
“To ensure credibility in the voting system, accreditation, voting and collation needs to be done electronically to avoid errors and to also trace malpractices in the system.
“Snatching of ballot boxes and other election-related offences are common features during elections in Nigeria, but these acts often go unpunished. We encourage parliament to pass the bill for the enactment of the National Electoral Offences Commission, to ensure that electoral offenders are punished.
“It is important to ensure that voter cards are not only transferable but flexible, a Nigerian should be able to vote anywhere they are, when the need arises.
“Also, the inclusion of people living with disabilities in the voting process should not be treated as an after-thought. Their needs should be included during election planning to ensure they are able to adequately exercise their rights.
“Finally, an embargo should be placed on the ability of political office holders to make financial transactions close to the elections.
“With these submissions, we hope to enact policy change that creates sustainable improvement to the Nigerian electoral ecosystem and contributes to the strengthening of our democracy.”
Kamaru Usman has raked in a mammoth £1.1million, about N584.2 million after his impressive knockout victory over Jorge Masvidal on Saturday night, Sportivation.com.ng reports.
The Nigerian Nightmare has been handsomely rewarded for his stunning performance and he was the best-paid fighter on the card which was witnessed by 15, 000 fans in Florida.
According to Daily Mail, Usman earned £538,000 to show up, £459,000 pay-per-view bonus, a £43,000 sponsorship bonus and a well deserved £35,000 Performance of the Night bonus.
Jorge Masvidal also earned £358,000 to show, £186,000 in pay-per-view money and a £28,000 sponsorship bonus.
This is the biggest payday of Usman’s career so far and the Welterweight champion also benefited from the fact that Masvidal is also a top draw for the fans.
Kamaru Usman is a Nigerian-American professional mixed martial artist, former freestyle wrestler and graduated folkstyle wrestler.
