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Publisher's Intro'
"It’s not what you don’t have, it’s what you do have, but don’t know how to use it that will
slow you down.” --Fela Duro-Toye I Said to Myself.
The Sunday Times and News of the World are the two must read for
me every Sunday. Yes, every Sunday religiously. The Sunday Times for its intellectual stimulation and News of the World for its sports
and a bit of its celebrity gossip.
On this Sunday, 22 June 2008, the sub-lead on the front page of The Sunday Times was such that
would have made News of the World green with envy. It was the story of one Alinoor Ahmed Sheikh, a Somali and Muslim Asylum seeker
in Tralee, who refused to shake hands with a woman who was to present him with a prize at the World Refugee Day Award 2008.
Alinoor's logic was that shaking hands with a woman was against his religious beliefs. A claim that was
supported by the Secretary General of the Irish Council of Imams, Ali Selim, who explained it away as “a code of modesty for Muslims.”
And that very woman who was to present Alinoor with the prize, the woman that Alinoor would not want to shake her hands for religious
reasons, was our own Benedicta Attoh.
So it is this very story that has informed our Talking Point column this month. We want to know: “Are Women
Inferior to Men?” Of course Bennie gives her take on the raging issue. And to play the devil's advocate, we symbolically placed Bennie's “Women's
Corner” in the heart of Talking Point column.
Peter and Paul Okoye, popularly known as P-Square, were in Ireland recently for the mother of all concerts,
and it was a big hit. Xclusive Magazine crew was there to cover the event, both in Dublin and Galway. Inside the pages, we have all the details
and vintage photos that you will never read or see anywhere. We also had an xclusive interview with them. For fifty minutes I took them
on on burning issues, one of which was: is the hit track “Do Me” all about sex, yes, i was that blunt?
There are our regulars on Entertainment, Fashion and Lifestyle...Dispatches, Agony Aunt, Out of Africa,
Kiddies Zone, All About Style, Dispatches….even our short story page is back.
Rotimi Adebari, it's impossible for me to capture, in a spur of the moment and in a few words, the reaches
of your great stride and achievement for it's awesome, but I will try….You've been a wonderful ambassador and an able pioneer. You gave us
the confidence to believe in ourselves and you gave the world the confidence to believe in our potentials. Heroes and geniuses like you
don't step aside, never go away, they regroup and move up to high ideals. Soon, very soon I'm sure, we'll be celebrating you again…
Thank you, Ireland's first black Mayor!
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief.
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