WHEN XERONA DUKE BECAME MRS. DERIN PHILLIPS

Gorgeous Xerona

It was a beautiful, classy, very well attended, very well organized, totally top notch wedding on all counts. Bride and groom's family both have solid pedigree on all counts.

On the side of the bride-Xerona's side, the dad, Mr. Donald Duke was a former Governor of Cross Rivers State, who served for 8 years and apparently did very well leaving behind a wondrous legacy. His wife Onari Duke is an astute businesswoman on all counts. Both are directors at UBA Group Plc. Donald Duke's dad was one of the first indigenous head of the Customs Board back in the days and that's not a little thing, just imagine that former Vice president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar was a deputy Controller General when he retired.

On the groom's side, that's is Derin's aka DJ Caise's side, his mom is the first daughter of one of the richest Africa's to have ever lived. A man of great status and stature, ambassador plenipotentiary for many countries, not the country of his birth. A man of awesome and unbelievable wealth, well steeped in the tradition and culture of Nigeria, one of highest ranked member of the Ogboni, in the person of the late Chief Antonio Deinde Fernandez. DERIN's mom was a former member of the cabinet/administration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Derin also known or better known as DJ Caise, is one of the top 10 most popular deejays in Nigeria. XERONA is one of the 2 extremely beautiful daughters of the Dukes.

The massive traditional wedding had held in Calabar, Cross Rivers a forth night ago and it was huge on all counts. Either by the magnitude of the guest list etc or otherwise. It had many of the who-is-who across the country in attendance. It was an occasion well steeped in the tradition and culture of the south-south, Donald Duke being Efik and Quas, Onari Duke being Kalabari and then the Phillips are Yorubas. Dj Caise's mother is from Lagos and we all know very well that Eko is always for show.

So it was a beautiful intermingling of beautiful cultures, tradition and it was quite colorful too and full of drama. We have thought to collage 3 sets of pictures together to get this story across. You have a few of the white wedding pictures, which took place just this last Saturday at the Federal Palace Hotel, Ahmadu Bello Way, Victoria Island, Lagos. It was very well attended as a matter of fact. We have the Dubai cord of 3 strands ceremony pictures and then, we have more of the super colorful traditional wedding in Calabar, that had the crème of the society in attendance. Imagine that the Emir of  Kano was there with the Obong of Calabar. Aliko Dangote and his fellow Kano brother, Abdulsamad Isiyaku Rabiu of BUA also came and sat near each other. Impressive style king John Obayuwana was also in attendance as he and Donald Duke are adherents of the Grail Message, in fact high ranking members.

The cord of 3 strands ceremony is a symbol of the sacred union created on the wedding day. It depicts God's sacred union in marriage. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves and a cord of 3 strands is not quickly broken Ecclesiasttes 4:12

Xerona as was expected was like a fairy princess, looking extremely gorgeous and mind-blowingly beautiful in her resplendent wedding dress by Andrea Iyamah. The event was so fun, that the father of the bride a music lover to the core at a point joined the Shuga Band to drop some songs to the delight of all.

Wedding was organized by Ibidun Ighodalo of Elizabeth R, who is acknowledged as one of the top 3 best and biggest in EVENTS managers in Nigeria.

More after the break.

WE (NIGERIANS) ARE LIVING IN FOOL'S PARADISE. FORMER GOVERNOR DONALD DUKE

Donald Duke

'...And there is no master-plan to make each one of the states an economic entity,” Duke said. “So, we have a country, where a blessing (exponential population growth) is turning into a curse, because in the next three years, our population will be 200 million, yet all the productive indices are going down. Lagos may be crowded out; every year, 750,000 new people come to Lagos to reside; the economy cannot support that. So if you don’t get the rest of the country working, Lagos itself will collapse.

“I had a meeting once with U.S. State Department, and they said to me, we have no conversion interest in Nigeria any longer; yes we have a few companies – ExxonMobil, Chevron – working here, but we don’t buy oil from Nigeria, and the export-import bill is not significant. But we have a lot of interest in Nigeria, and that is security. Nigeria, to them, is like a dam, and if it should burst, it would flood all of West and Central Africa. So their only interest in Nigeria is insecurity because the country can also be a base for terrorism – terrorists thrive in poor environments. They are not dealing with us on the basis of commerce, they are dealing with us on the threat that we pose to them.”

Duke also believes the Buhari government has no business patting itself on the back on the basis of improving the economy.

“Just because it is easier for goods to pass through the port – that’s no big deal,” he said. “The point is what does each one of us add to the general well- being of the country. Most folks in Nigeria are parasitic. You walk on the streets and people in the prime of their lives are hawking plantain chips if they are lucky to find something to hawk. We, the few privileged, sit in our cars, our windows wound up, and pretend to look at our phones because we don’t want to see the reality out there.

“This country, for instance, has to grow at about 15 per cent annually, not in Lagos, but nationally, for the next ten years, to absorb the numbers that are out of the economy. We are self-deceptive. We say that unemployment is 15 per cent.

In other words, out of every 100 only 15 have no jobs. I think it is the other way round; only 15 have jobs and the rest 85 are living off the 15; the question is how long can that go on?

“Then we sit down and say that inflation is 16 per cent. How do you arrive at that? I know I’m broke. So if inflation is too much money in circulation, where is this money? The truth is too few people have too much money. If you re-circulate resources properly, and I am not being socialist here (all you need to do is to create jobs for people), then you’ll find that it will reflect on the economy.

“So what we are doing is to run a goodwill economy; 85 percent of the economy is depending on the goodwill of the 15 percent.”

To move the country forward, Mr. Duke advocated for a policy he described as SHIT (Skills, Health, Infrastructure and Technology).

“I don’t use education any longer because education is beyond reading and writing. Education without the set skills that make you productive is hollow,” he said. “We are ridiculously spiritual because we live purely by the grace of God. Yes, we all do, but heaven helps those who help themselves. If you are afflicted here by a disease today, your chances of survival are 50:50. The drugs for common diseases are not even manufactured here. So we have a loss of productivity that we have not addressed at all.”

Culled from Thisday Newspaper