“I’ll continue at Barcelona and my attitude won’t change, no matter how much I have wanted to go. I thought my time in Barcelona was over, sadly – I always wanted to finish my career here,” Messi told Goal.

With this statement, Lionel Messi calmed the avalanche of speculations that has surrounded his contract with FC Barcelona over the past weeks.

The saga began following the horror of the Champions League match against Bayern Munich – or so everyone thought, where the German side handed Barcelona 8-2 demolition, in its most humiliating campaign in the Champions League in recent times.

The next few days witnessed a series of changes that started with the sack of Barcelona coach, Quique Setien, sports director, Eric Abidal and announcement by the club’s president, Josep Bartomeu that many players are going to leave.

In the next few days, former Barcelona player, Ronald Koeman was announced as the club’s new coach. Days after, Koeman held a meeting with Messi in his zeal to commence a new era at the Catalan side. It was not clear what was said in the meeting, but the next day, Messi dropped the bombshell – he’s leaving Barcelona.

The news ignited a storm of anxiety in and outside the club. It was the most talked about development on the internet during that week, behind it was a 33 years old whose heart was broken by the club he loved so much.

The controversy dated back to events of the past seasons which made the Bayern match a horrifying sequel. The preceding seasons saw Barcelona losing semi-final matches 1-4 to AS Roma, after a 3-1 first leg lead, and 0-4 to Liverpool after a 3-0 lead, forcing Messi to break his promise of a Champions League trophy. The most devastating part of it all was how humiliating the losses were.

“But I looked further afield and I want to compete at the highest level, win titles, and compete in the Champions League. You can win or lose in it, because it is very difficult, but you have to compete. At least compete for it and let us not fall apart in Rome, Liverpool, Lisbon. All that led me to think about that decision that I wanted to carry out,” he told Goal.

The six-time Ballon D’or winner had pointed to poor management of the club as a reason for the consecutive woes. His agony was aggravated when Barcelona ended the season winning nothing. The club didn’t make it to Copa del Rey’s final, and complacently lost the domestic league to Spanish rival, Real Madrid.

“And the truth is that there has been no project or anything for a long time, they juggle and cover holes as things go by,” Messi said.

The failures have fueled fans’ campaigns, urging Bartomeu to resign. Many believe that the president’s resignation would have calmed the storm.

However, when Messi threw in the towel, Barcelona was not ready to quit. In response to his burofax requesting his transfer, the club said he has €700 million buyout clause, which must be paid before he is allowed to leave. That was the turning point of Messi’s desire to leave the club, and to cap it, La Liga supported Barcelona’s claim.

“I thought and was sure that I was free to leave, the president always said that at the end of the season I could decide if I stayed or not.

“Now they cling to the fact that I did not say it before June 10, when it turns out that on June 10 we were competing for La Liga in the middle of this awful coronavirus and this disease altered all the season,” he said.

Messi’s attempt to leave Barcelona created unprecedented panic in Spain. Both the club and the league were going to lose staggering amounts of money in TV rights and sponsorship deals, and the only way to avert that is to stop Messi from leaving. So they teamed up to pull the €700 million clause on him knowing that only the court can say otherwise.

“And this is the reason why I am going to continue in the club. Now I am going to continue in the club because the president told me that the only way to leave was to pay the €700 million (£624m/$823m) clause, and that is impossible.

“There was another way and it was to go to trial. I would never go to court against Barca because it is the club that I love, which gave me everything since I arrived. It is the club of my life; I have made my life here.

“Barca gave me everything and I gave it everything. I know that it never crossed my mind to take Barca to court,” he added.

Messi told Goal that another thing that played a big part in his decision to stay at Barcelona is his family.

“When I communicated my wish to leave to my wife and children, it was a brutal drama,” he said. “The whole family began crying, my children did not want to leave Barcelona, nor did they want to change schools.”

As La Liga and Barcelona celebrate Messi’s turnaround, many wonder if his heart toward the club will ever be the same, particularly under a new coach. The Argentine astro said his attempt to leave his beloved club will not change anything.

“I will continue at Barca and my attitude will not change no matter how much I have wanted to go. I will do my best. I always want to win, I’m competitive and I don’t like to lose anything. I always want the best for the club, for the dressing room and for myself,” Messi told Goal.

A few days ago, the news of a woman that was arrested by EFCC for defrauding a job seeker went viral. According to this account, the woman, Hajiya Hadiza Umar Abubakar, in 2019, promised her victim, Nuradeen Abubakar, an instant employment in EFCC. However, for this to happen, Nuradeen was asked to pay the sum of six million naira (N6,000,000) to her. Nuradeen paid three million naira in October 2019 and promised to balance up the remaining three million naira when he receives the appointment letter. It was said that Hajiya Hadiza promised him that the appointment letter will be out in two weeks time from the day of the payment. But that was nine months ago and Nuradeen is yet to see any letter.

The story of Nuradeen and Hajiya Hadiza is not new. We hear about people defrauding job seekers of money they don’t have. We also hear of fake recruiters that give phony appointment letters to their victims. Sometimes these people that defraud job seekers are workers in the said companies. Sometimes they are fraudsters that set up offices to take advantage of the bad condition of things in the country. Other times they are relatives of top officers in the concerned companies they performed phony recruitments for. Who they are or who they are not is not the issue right now. The fact remains that a lot of people are out there to rip off the unemployed among us.

But one question that is yet to be answered is, “Why do job seekers pay heavy amounts of money as bribes to secure jobs?”

I’ve asked this question several times and the answers I always received sound like, “Wait until you’re desperate for a job.” Anytime I receive an answer like this, it dawns on me that people are still ready to pay to land jobs. Can you imagine Nuradeen paying N6m for a job in a government agency? How much did they tell him EFCC officials are paid as salary? I mean, let’s look at this logically, if someone has N6m to spare for a job that may pay him about 100k or a little more than that in a month, don’t you think that it makes no sense at all? How did he raise that money? Why won’t that money be used as capital for a business? If you have N6m to spare, will you work for someone?

The more I consider the case of Nuradeen and Hajiya, the more I realise that our problem is complex. It is possible that Nuradeen wanted the EFCC job so badly because he has heard of “deals” they do there, which can fetch him several multiples of that money he will pay Hajiya. It is possible that he heard that he will receive a fat salary in EFCC even though he will not be going to work. It is possible that he has been made to believe that government paid jobs are the best sources of income. I don’t know what he has heard that pushed him into such a foolhardy act, but it is obvious that he has been misinformed.

The fact still remains that more and more people will face the same fate encountered by Nuradeen if something is not done. The problem we have here is that many Nigerians want to sit down in cosy offices and receive fat checks by the end of the month. These same people believe that when they get old, they will continue to receive fat checks as pension. How I wish they know better.

The only way to reduce this fraudulent act of creating phony jobs is by encouraging entrepreneurship among youths. It’s not that everybody should be an entrepreneur but at least many should delve into it. And the good thing is that the more entrepreneurs we have, the more jobs we can create. At least, this will reduce the rate by which jobseekers are swindled.

Of course I know that the government needs to provide an enabling environment for new businesses to flourish. But the non-enabling environment we have here has not been able to deter many business owners. So if some people can survive the harsh and unstable government policies in Nigeria, people like Nuradeen, who have money to throw about, should be encouraged to venture into businesses, that is, if they don’t have any.

Tencent lost about $34 billion of its market value over the last two days following the news that its wave-making game, playerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has been banned by the Indian government.

More than 100 mobile apps with links to China were banned in India last week after the Ministry of Electronics said it received complaints of misuse of users’ private data.

“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously users’ data in an unauthorized to servers which have locations outside India.

“The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center, Ministry of Homes Affairs has also sent an exhaustive recommendation for blocking these malicious apps,” the Ministry said in a statement.

Tencent was quick to refute the claim that it’s stealing users’ data. The company said its apps have always complied with data privacy laws, and it hopes to resolve the issue with the government.

“Tencent takes the protection of user privacy and data seriously. Our apps have always remained in compliance with applicable data protection laws in India and all other markets where we operate.

“We look forward to engaging Indian authorities to clarify our long established policy and action in protecting user data, and hope to ensure the continued availability of our apps in India,” Recent said in response to the ban.

The ban came following a fresh face-off between Indian and Chinese military along the southern banks of Pangong Tso Lake. In June, the Indian government had announced the ban of 59 apps, mostly Chinese, including the popular short video app, TikTok. The September ban includes PUGB Mobile and its sister-apps like PUGB Mobile Lite and PUGB Mobile Nordic Map: Livik among others.

As the conflict between the two Asian giants escalates, more Chinese apps and tech companies are getting wound up in its lurch.

India is PUBG’s biggest market with a record 24% downloads, beating China’s 16.7% and US’ 6.4% according to data from Sensor Tower.

Consequently, Tencent and gamers have been hit hard by the ban as it means abruptly halting their source of revenue and means of livelihood.

Tencent has lost nearly $34 billion since the ban was announced, as its shares have fallen over 4% since Thursday. The tech giant will likely suffer further losses in coming weeks as the ban has been motivated by political conflict, and the Indian government is likely not going to reconsider its decision.

The loss is reportedly the biggest since the company lost $66 billion last month, following Donald Trump’s executive order banning WeChat.

Tencent went to India in 2017 with $700 million investment into Flipkart and $1.1 billion into ride-hailing service Ola; they were the most valuable internet-based companies at that time. Ever since then, the Chinese tech giant has explored other opportunities to expand its presence in India, as the country holds a huge internet market.

Part of Tencent’s strategy of reaching India’s underserved population is the PUBG Lite, introduced as a smaller version of the original game to give people with low quality phones the opportunity to play the online games. The original PUBG games require high version smartphones and it was a barrier for potential players who couldn’t afford bigger phones.

The PUBG Lite was also designed to help gamers in areas where internet connectivity were poor to receive stronger signals.

Unfortunately, the ban came at a time when a large number of India’s population is getting used to the games. It’s a shared loss between the company and Indian government. While Tencent is losing its revenue the Indian people are losing their jobs.