THE STATS BEHIND ANOTHER RECORD-BREAKING SEASON FOR BARCA AND LUIS ENRIQUE

Lionel Messi and Co. celebrated yet another Liga title victory on Saturday, pipping rivals Real Madrid to the post, and we take a look at the numbers behind their triumph
Barcelona have won another La Liga title after beating Granada 3-0, and they have done so in some style.

The victory marks Barca's sixth title victory in the past eight seasons, their 24th in total, and they have earned their latest piece of silverware in swashbuckling fashion.

Barca, led by the fearsome attacking triumvirate of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez, have scored a staggering 112 goals in La Liga in 2015-16 but, amazingly, that haul is only the third best of their time in the top-flight; they scored 115 in 2012-13 and 114 in 2011-12.

Suarez - the third player to score 40 goals in a league season after Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo - netted a hat-trick as Granada were downed, his sixth hat-trick of the season. No other player across Europe's top five leagues has scored more than three.

Yet, despite their imperious form Barca have won the league with 91 points, the lowest title-winning total they have recorded since 2008-09, when they chalked up 87 under Pep Guardiola.

The Catalan giants are heavily indebted to the MSN trio, too, with Suarez (40), Messi (26) and Neymar (24) scoring an incredible 90 goals between them.

And, finally, Luis Enrique is the seventh manager to win the two consecutive Spanish league titles, and is the second boss to do so for Barca, after Guardiola.

Comments

Understanding Prof. Yemi Osinbajo - Abraham Ogbodo

Abraham Ogbodo I am trying to understand Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Often, he speaks out of character. That is, he talks as if he is Vice President before he is a professor of law, even when I know that the latter comes first. The man wasn’t like this when he was the attorney general of Lagos State and a teacher at the Law Faculty of the University of Lagos. Then, his statements were measured and as a seasoned lawyer, based on facts. But today, Osinbajo is sounding like Adams Oshiomhole, a union leader, who by the grace of God, became governor of Edo State for eight years. The revelations about big thefts in the economy had come more from Adams than even Ibrahim Magu, chairman of the EFCC. It was Adams who said former petroleum minister; Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke alone stole 13 billion British pounds from the national treasury. That is like saying she stole in raw cash almost twice as much as the entire fortune of Alhaj...

Boko Haram’s campaign against education and enlightenment - By Landry Signe

Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group originating from Nigeria is frightened by this enlightening power of education. Unsurprisingly, on Monday, February 19, the group, whose name often translates to “Western education is a sin,” stormed a girls’ school in the village of Dapchi in northern Nigeria to abduct students. Of the 907 schoolgirls who were in the school the day of the attack, more than 100 are still missing as of Sunday. Since it became violent about a decade ago, Boko Haram’s actions, through these and other types of bloody attacks, have resulted in horrifying consequences. Human Rights Watch estimates that Boko Haram has left at least 7 million in need of humanitarian assistance, 2.1 million displaced, and 20,000 civilians dead. Local leaders claim the number is significantly higher. Despite such causalities, it took Boko Haram’s massive kidnapping of 276 sch...

A ‘debt trap’ awaiting aspiring governors? - Anthony Osae-Brown

In the early pages (11 and 12) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) economic report for the fourth quarter of 2017, there is information hidden between the technical language that may have significant implication for ‘wanna be state governors’ in the country. It is the fact that the current governors are piling up debt that the incoming governors would have to deal with in 2019 when they assume the title of ‘His Excellency.’ For those without a strategy to deal with this, that could signal the beginning of their troubles in that exalted office. The CBN fourth quarter report shows that while the federal government is cutting down its exposure in the domestic debt markets, state governments are fast filling up the space with new debt. The report notes that banking systems credit to the federal government at the end of the fourth quarter of 2017 went down 28 percent compared to corresponding period of 2016, when the federal government exposure to the banking sector was up 38.7 percent...

ATTENCAO

Search This Blog