Lagos lawyer and clergyman Femi Giwa-Amu returned to Facebook after more than a 32-month absence to mourn his dead daughter, Renua, who accused him of sexually abusing her as a child.
Renua, who studied at Savannah College of Art & Design in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, committed suicide on Saturday, moments after revealing her plan on her Instastory and warning that family members should not mourn her.
The day after by 6.24 am on Sunday, her father posted a non-verbal message on Facebook, a photo of two hands holding a lit candle.
He did not write anything about the daughter. Just the candle.
Giwa-Amu has not been regular on the social media platform. His last post was on 10 April 2018.
His post attracted an outpouring of grief and sympathy from friends and relations, but some are wondering about the sincerity of it all.
On 18 September, Renua had gone public to accuse her father of sexually abusing her as a child. She called the father a pedophile and claimed he molested many other kids too.
Bella Kitan Joseph, saw through the hypocrisy and slammed Giwa-Amu for the post. “With all due disrespect, f..k you! How dare you mourn Renua when you’re the reason she’s dead?!?!, she wrote on Facebook.
In a second post, she drove her point home:
“Femi Giwa-Amu, you killed Renua’s spirit a long time ago, now she’s finished the job! You’re an abuser, manipulator, thief, drug addict and murderer and I pray you feel all the pain you caused Renua and everyone else still suffering because of you! I pray that pain stings you till the day you die! Even if Renua is dead, we know what you did and you cannot use her death to play the good parent! You are evil in its purest form and I pray you suffer!”.
In another post, she said:
“Femi Giwa-Amu! Renua’s death is on your head! You caused her an unbearable amount of pain and I pray it haunts you till the day you die!
But the hordes of wailers on Giwa Amu’s Facebook page did not care a hoot about Bella’s remonstration.
“Words fail me Femi, pls accept my heartfelt condolences. May the Lord comfort you all in these trying times. Amen”, wrote Priscilla Omai in her condolence.
Anne Ayanate Braide also condoled with Giwa Amu: My condolences and may the Lord strengthen you and your family”.
Okey Okuzu also said: My bro Femi. I have been on your wall and Ozolua. O. Giwa-Amu’s wall several times today – each time hoping no praying that this was some type of 2020 joke. Alas it was not so. Femi – take heart. God knows best. And he will help you and your family heal. May your daughter’s gentle soul rest in peace”.
By 10.am on Monday, Giwa-Amu’s grieving post had generated over 135 comments, with none raising an issue over Renua’s disclosure about her dad and her suicide thereafter.
Here is the 18 September hair-raising post by Renua on her father:
She titled it “A short open letter to a certain Mr OBAFEMI EHIMIGBAI GIWA-AMU”.
I know that you are a child molester, your numerous victims outnumber you and I remember everything now. All I have to say to you is this:
You, your rings of pedophiles, bullies, thieves, hired cronies and family gang can do whatever you like in eternum. You already do so, and my belief in karma is strong enough to know that you have already begun the processes that will eventually be your own downfall. But lately, I got triggered again into remembering details about certain threats against my and my siblings you often made against our lives if I was ever to become successful and return to Nigeria after daring to come forward with my truth. I already did that. I had the nervous breakdown in 2018 when the truth about your various exploits and smuggling schemes finally came back to me in a big, horrible way.
So, take note; if really you want to live long enough to indeed be the old dog turning tired tricks that you already are, you would be advised to start covering your pedophile tracks more efficiently. We both know you won’t; that is how your specific and vile pathology works. I only feel sorry for the countless women and men who consciously or unconsciously allowed you access into their lives, homes, children and businesses over the decades of your horrific schemes. I wished that I could make you a better man when I was little and had no choice engaging in the things I eventually believed normal because of you. Not because you even deserve the simple joy of being a good person, but because this already wicked world never needed the vile stench of a soul like yours to walk it and the day you breathe last on it, will be a purer tomorrow.
All of that is fact, already known widely and in private, but after having to watch helplessly before while you took various jobs, titles and high positions that allowed you, smuggle and steal, trick innocent parents into sending their children places with you when really you know anything you did for money was always a reluctant business front you used to scout more victims, sophisticated scams and channels to perpetuate more crimes across international borders…. after watching you do all that and still manage to get away, living scot free off whatever femme du jour, I must admit it’s too hard to stay quiet again as an adult. Most people already know the thieving facts about you, but many more fools searching for quick easy money will always be happy to associate with a crook like you. So at this point, I just have to make a necessary, painful but awkward and public announcement for people in respectable society to understand that you should perhaps be discouraged from being such a homicidal thieving pervert, or maybe at least not be able to ask their kids to sit in your lap casually anymore.
People make strange choices indeed; I have never understood the adults in my life who had power to create positive change over certain situations and just simply never did. Some lack courage, some lack intuition, maybe others simply believe this is how the world works and don’t bother trying to fight anymore. Thankfully, the world has beaten, pissed on and shot me down enough (starting with a father like you) it has become a source of pride, joy, excitement, happiness and even vindictive pleasure for me to help make it a safer place, even just a little, by putting my feminist money where my mouth is and outing your miserable depraved self to the world and whomever might be concerned with this message.
To people associated with us both who try and guilt me into forgiving you, I sincerely hope they find either the healing or direction to understand why it is they feel personally incensed to police the tone and actions of a former child sex slave, or why they are willing to stick their necks out for a continuously harmful sexually offensive perpetrator who is wanted in several states across the world.
His current piggybank/wife has vulnerable & unwell children, and built him a makeshift church with a budding congregation over which he presided as pastor and held sermons. My pedophilic father renamed his third wife after me, and she bears the name Ohirenua willingly. An uncle of mine dismissed my feelings about it saying it was intended perhaps as a “compliment”…..meanwhile it makes my skin crawl. Some others have whispered of his political aspirations of seeking glory in the footsteps of his father who was once an attorney-general of the old mid-west states of Nigeria. So, sentiments and forgiveness aside, the man is still doing the things that nearly ruined my life, to others. And that alone makes me sick to my stomach. Someone needs to stop this madness before it affects a child you know, you knew or once trusted him with. Several of my nursery, primary school, and secondary school friends in Nigeria at some point or the other always had to eventually tell me they couldn’t come to my house anymore because my dad was “becoming a problem.”
It has to stop. I did my part in stopping this man from continuing to thrive amongst the chaos and disorderly nature of Nigerian living, both as a child and now as an adult. I have spent enough years cracking my brain over this and wondering what to do ever since I first noticed and wondered why my father always seemed to lick his lips while hungrily staring at any light-skinned children he spotted in Nigeria, as though he was about to eat a sandwich. I went through hell telling several adults who ignored, punished and dismissed me about this, to the point that I finally just dissociated and forgot a lot of this even happened until fairly recently. Whenever I remembered what he did to me as a child and attempted to tell anyone, and whenever he put me through his molestations, what followed was always an intense beating that always caused me to pass out and wake up feeling incredibly confused. It was a horrible, long process.
I do not ever seek out or ask for any informational updates about this man & his whereabouts as I do not associate with pedophilia in any format, and simply do not care to endanger my newly reclaimed safety by knowing him. Occasionally someone unwitting might think to use the concept of my child predator father to mock, insult or shame me. Source of shame that he is, I have no more guilt or anger towards myself and others who knew better, about this. Going through it all was the hardest part, but it took me many fractured years to piece myself together bit by bit, one PTSD flashback at a time, and it was a lifetime before I could look myself in the mirror and feel like I fully saw my own face. Entire chunks of my memory were once lost and taken from me, entire friendships and interests and hobbies and goals I had just vanished and might still not fully ever come back. Instead I carried around such intense feelings of shame, regret and self-loathing disgust that it consumed me most times. Good or bad, traumatic or not, those memories of mine that hurt me and triggered me for so long have finally woken me up and reminded me that I promised myself if I survived you, escaped, and somehow found enough sanity to be willing to return home that I would never set foot in Nigeria unless I had publicly acknowledged the fact that you continually raped me as a seven year old child until I had a possible prepubescent miscarry and almost died of sepsis. I wasn’t even in Primary 4 yet.
Good or bad, traumatic or not, those memories of mine that hurt me and triggered me for so long have finally woken me up and reminded me that I promised myself if I survived you, escaped, and somehow found enough sanity to be willing to return home that I would never set foot in Nigeria unless I had publicly acknowledged the fact that you continually raped me as a seven year old child until I had a possible prepubescent miscarry and almost died of sepsis. I wasn’t even in Primary 4 yet
I want you to know that my new, fulfilled and much happier family is made up of the abandoned projects you neither truly cared for as a husband nor father, and we were the only ones who loved you so blindly enough that while you destroyed us everyday on the inside, your kids only ever wanted to make you proud. The awful, scary truth is that we would have stuck by you through anything till the end of whatever this “family experiment” was for you, and could have helped you learn a better conscience and ways to take care of yourself. Instead, you freed us with your selfish departure and really, that is the one thing I can honestly say I will never stop thanking you for. You being a selfish piece of shit is eventually always going to be the best thing that happens to the people around you, because you will always plan to leave them when it suits you to change “sleeves”, as you once called me.
One day though, you will run out of the means and channels to find new victims, and I want to hope that you remember not to be audacious enough to attempt manipulating any of your old discarded hostages into taking care of you. Most certainly not me. If you don’t want to suffer, my advice to you is that you either start saving some scammy bucks for old age, or you just find a private place where nobody else will be bothered & kill yourself. I can’t speak for my siblings, but me sha, I know old age is creeping on you around the corner and even if you mistakenly happened to tap any more heroin from your mother’s ass to call me one day and ask for help? I will personally ensure you kick the very first bucket that comes your way.
Let me be clear, for summary and support: you do not exist. We do not speak of you. Your name has been changed mentally so that even in casual conversation we reference you as Jack or John or something, I forget. You need to know that what you did to me, your family, siblings, and all the poor people you took advantage of literally broke your father’s heart when he found out. What you were doing to me and the poor people of apapa & ebute metta he trusted you to care for, not to smuggle, rape and pillage, devastated my poor Gramps. It deeply disappointed him; he fell so sick that he never recovered and I finally remember why you never wanted me to tell anybody how & when you found out that my grandfather was sick. You killed him, plundered his estates to sell my birthrights away and ensure your siblings would have to suffer.
But as we very well have seen, the truth endures. And now the truth about you has been shared freely, the entire world now is free and able to make educated decisions about associating with you. I know I wouldn’t, because I don’t. And no matter how many times you call me to threaten me, or beg through fake tears that you are sorry for everything you and your brother did to me, I am going to spend the rest of my life sticking to my truth and spreading the gospel of your horrible lifelong misdeeds. You can kill me tomorrow, the way you hired killers to track down & kill my mother for surviving the years of mental warfare and trauma you put her through including your messy stint in America (when you fled from Atlanta to Nigeria hiding from the FBI who are still hoping to catch you for the crimes of your drugs smuggling and child sex trafficking ring all over the entire state).
You could even succeed in ending me and it still wouldn’t matter because now, it’s actually worth it for me to die knowing I did for myself as an adult what I needed someone to do for me as a child, and to have survived here now. Nigerians might be an ignorant, unhelpful and irritatingly enabling lot when it comes to listening to children over the messy adults in their lives, but we are also a very very VERY nosy lot. Even if it’s just for the gist, people will certainly have lots of inconvenient, nasty lingering questions about my disappearance if it occurs too swiftly after sharing this truth, especially in a country like ours where everybody knows you have henchmen & cronies on speed dial. By all means please, make me a martyr, I’ve enjoyed my time here and will go in peace. Just in case your sorry, loathsome, dimwitted, tiny egg balloon dick having self still is unfortunately dumb enough to spite your own soul and seek me out, pray you don’t find me. If you do? Better turn heel and flee like it’s the FBI approaching. Because it just might be.
The Nigeria Medical Association NMA has asked the federal government to carry out an independent evaluation of the COVID-19 vaccine before administering it on Nigerians.
Speaking during an interview on Channels TV on. Monday, President of the medical body, Professor Innocent Ujah said an evaluation of the vaccine is necessary considering Nigeria’s biological, environmental and genetic composition.
Professor Ujah recalled the era of chloroquine use when some Southern parts of the country were not responding to the drug the same way those in some parts of the North were.
”If the vaccines come to Nigeria, we need to quickly do our own evaluation of that vaccine. I cannot say with 100% certainty that in the process of developing this vaccine and the clinical trial whether African countries were involved.
“While we do not question the efficacy and safety, these things vary from place to place. The responses vary from place to place.
“In totality, it was thought that Chloroquine wasn’t effective and we changed.
“If we have to use the vaccine, we need to do our own clinical trials and see. For everything that is happening now is an emergency.
“Even the vaccine that is produced within nine months is an emergency. Otherwise, vaccine production doesn’t take within six to nine months. It is a process,” he said.
Recall that the Presidential Taskforce (PTF) on COVID-19 had promised that at least 40 million Nigerians will receive the vaccine for free when it is procured.
The Ogun State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has appealed to Governor Dapo Abiodun to allow churches observe the usual December 31 cross-over vigil into the new year.
Recall that Gov Abiodun last week banned cross-over night services in churches so as to forestall the spread of the second wave of the deadly COVID-19.
The Ogun CAN Chairman, Bishop Tunde Akin-Akinsanya, in an open letter to Abiodun, said he had received so much calls from church leaders, begging for the observance of cross-over nights on December 31, 2020.
Writing on behalf of the entire structure of CAN in Ogun State, Akin-Akinsanya craved the indulgence of Abiodun to allow for the observance of the cross-over vigil in churches in Ogun, as it is the case in Lagos State.
CAN requested that churches be allowed to observe the cross-over night from 10:30pm on December 31, 2020 till 12:15am on January 1, 2021.
The religious body also pleaded for the relaxation of curfew so that worshippers will be allowed to move back home between 12:15am and 1am of January 1.
Akin-Akinsanya assured the governor that churches will observe all necessary coronavirus protocols and guidelines recommended by government.
The Lagos State Government has shut down 12 facilities in the state for flouting the COVID-19 regulations concerning social and recreational centers.
This was done by the Lagos State Safety Commission while monitoring the compliance with the government’s directive on the COVID-19 pandemic during the holiday period.
The facilities which were shut down during the operations led by the Director-General, Lagos State Safety Commission, Mr. Lanre Mojola, include DNA Night Club, Buzz Bar, Silverfox, Cocoon, Westend Nightclub, Rumours, Lekki Waterside, Landmark Event Centre, The Wave Beach club amongst others.
Mojola mentioned that recalcitrant establishments who broke the government’s seal and continued partying will be charged to court once documentation has been properly processed.
He affirmed the government’s commitment to curbing the spread of COVID-19, saying it would leave no stone unturned to achieve the mandate.
The commission had earlier shut down Cubana, The Corner, 355 Restaurant and Night Club amongst others in an operation which started on December 19, 2020.
According to Mojola, the failure to observe safety guidelines at restaurants, bars, cafes and public places increases the chance of spreading the virus.
He advised people to observe the necessary safety precautions as they go about celebrating the Christmas holidays. He urged them to take responsibility and support the government in its effort to curtail the virus.
A Chinese citizen journalist held since May for her livestream reporting from Wuhan as the COVID-19 outbreak unfolded was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday, almost a year after details of an “unknown viral pneumonia” surfaced in the central China city.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak.
Her live reports and essays were widely shared on social media platforms in February, grabbing the attention of authorities, who have punished eight virus whistle-blowers so far as they try to stamp out criticism of the government’s response to the outbreak.
“Zhang Zhan looked devastated when the sentence was announced,” Ren Quanniu, one of Zhang’s defence lawyers, told reporters confirming the four year jail term outside Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court on Monday morning.
Her mother sobbed loudly as the verdict was read, Ren added.
Beijing has congratulated itself for “extraordinary” success in controlling the virus inside its borders, with an economy on the rebound while much of the rest of the world suffers through painful lockdowns and surging caseloads a year since the first cases of the then unknown virus emerged in Wuhan.
Controlling the information flow during an unprecedented global health crisis has been pivotal in allowing China’s communist authorities to reframe the narrative in their favour.
But that has come at a serious cost to anyone picking holes in that storyline.
“Zhang Zhan looked devastated when the sentence was announced,” Ren Quanniu, one of Zhang’s defence lawyers, told reporters confirming the four year jail term outside Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court on Monday morning.
Her mother sobbed loudly as the verdict was read, Ren added.
Concerns are mounting over the health of 37-year-old Zhang who began a hunger strike in June and has been force-fed via a nasal tube.
“She said when I visited her (last week): ‘If they give me a heavy sentence then I will refuse food until the very end.’… She thinks she will die in prison,” Ren said before the trial.
“It’s an extreme method of protesting against this society and this environment.”
China’s communist authorities have a history of putting dissidents on trial in opaque courts between Christmas and New Year to minimise Western scrutiny.
The trial comes just weeks before an international team of World Health Organization experts is expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of Covid-19.
Another lawyer said Zhang’s health was in decline and she suffered from headaches, dizziness and stomach pain.
Restrained 24 hours a day, she needs assistance going to the bathroom,” Zhang Keke, who visited her on Christmas Day, wrote in a note circulated on social media.
“She feels psychologically exhausted, like every day is a torment.”
Zhang was critical of the early response in Wuhan, writing in a February essay that the government “didn’t give people enough information, then simply locked down the city”.
“This is a great violation of human rights,” she wrote.
The court said she had spread “false remarks” online, according to Zhang Keke.
Rights groups have also drawn attention to her case.
Authorities “want to use her case as an example to scare off other dissidents from raising questions about the pandemic situation in Wuhan earlier this year”, said Leo Lan, research and advocacy consultant at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders NGO.
Zhang is the first to face trial of a group of four citizen journalists detained by authorities earlier this year after reporting from Wuhan.
Previous attempts by AFP to contact the other three — Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua — were unsuccessful.
Outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump dropped his objections Sunday night and signed the $2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief and government spending bill.
The bill incorporates $600 stimulus checks for most Americans.
Trump had teased about the likelihood of his backpedaling when he wrote o Twitter: “Good news on Covid Relief Bill. Information to follow!”
The over 5,600-page bill was passed by Congress on Monday night.
The bill authorizes direct checks of $600 for people earning up to $75,000 per year. The amount decreases for higher earners and people who make over $95,000 get nothing.
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It also contains a $600 per child stimulus payment.
The bill creates a new $300 weekly unemployment supplement and replenishes a forgivable loan program for small businesses.
Trump had objected to the omnibus bill, saying it offers little to the struggling Americans.
Instead, he wants the $600 checks to be increased to $2,000.
He also wanted the bill to expunge extraneous items, such as foreign aid.
He actually in a viral video described the bill as ‘ a disaster’.
Nigerians are demanding justice for 11-year-old boy who was allegedly sexually abused at Deeper Life school.
Don Davis was molested by senior boys in his private school and he revealed that they put their hands, legs, and every one manner of stuff in his anus.
Days ago, Don Davis’s mother cried out on social media as she shared before and after photos of the boy as she accused the varsity of neglecting her son while he was very sick in class.
According to reports, Don Davis was hospitalized and couldn’t walk properly thanks to the sexual assault he suffered.
Last week his mom was invited to meet with the Commissioner of Education in Akwa Ibom where she revealed in attendance were members of the school board, the guilty students and their parents as well as their parent’s friends.
In a live video she revealed that the Commissioner began to attack her for posting the video online, accusing her of bringing shame to the government, in a bid to forcefully put down the videos from circulation, her phones were seized but later on released.
This action by the government has spurred Nigerians to demand justice for Don Davis with the hashtag #JusticeForDonDavis trending at number one on Twitter.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who was Nigeria’s military Head of State between December 1983 and August 1985, has given a number of reasons why he toppled the democratically elected government of the then President, the late Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
Buhari, then as a Major-General who was the General Officer Commanding of the Third Armoured Division in Jos, Plateau State, said in a letter that he led a “revolution” in Nigeria because of the staggering corruption, insecurity and indiscipline in the government.
SaharaReporters obtained Buhari’s letter, which was dated, January 6, 1984, and was addressed to Her Excellency, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher.
Buhari’s four-page letter was personally signed by him, as Major General Muhammadu Buhari, Head of the Federal Military Government, Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces.
SaharaReporters observed in the letter that Buhari identified collapsed economy, rising inflation, corruption in government and the failure of the government to provide security for lives and property as the key ingredients that led to the revolution.
Buhari’s letter to Thatcher reads, “Recent events in Nigeria leading to a peaceful change of government must have evoked different reactions in various places and I thought I should direct this personal communication to your excellency in order to acquaint you with the background to the intervention by the Nigerian armed forces.
“Here at home, the situation is well understood and the change of government has been received with the widest acclaim. Even in those circles which, for obvious reasons, and to lose most through the corrective measures being contemplated to restore the sense of decency and accountability in public life, the smooth takeover and the accompanying calm and general acquiescence has been more than salutary.
“When the last military administration voluntarily handed over power to civilians in 1979, it was with very high hopes for the future. The handing over exercise was carefully planned and faithfully executed. The 1979 constitution was promulgated. There was justifiable optimism that Nigeria was headed for an era of progress, unity and stability, under a free and elected democratic government.
“However, so soon after the handing over, in both the administrative and legislative organs of government, a myriad of public functionaries embarked on a systematic circumvention of most of the checks and balances entrenched in the constitution. Pervasive corruption entrenched combined with moral and financial indiscipline to ensure that millions of naira were stolen from the national coffers and stacked away in banks inside and outside the country by many unpatriotic citizens actively aided and abetted by certain unscrupulous foreign associates.”
He continued that the military intervention was unavoidable because “the people groaned under the twin yoke of pervasive corruption, skyrocketing prices and general insecurity of lives and property.”
He said, “What was left was quickly dissipated on loaded contracts and over-invoicing of imports designed to allow generous kickbacks to government and political party functionaries. Approved and correct procedures were systematically undermined and the normal functioning of the government machinery deliberately perverted for personal gains.
“Individuals were becoming increasingly apprehensive of their personal security and the future seemed to hold little hope for improvement in the status quo. The majority of public functionaries, at all levels, freely engaged themselves in irregularities with impunity since those at the top and supervisory grades were themselves known to be involved in corrupt practices and impropriety.
“Bribes and gratifications were contemptuously demanded and given. Visitors to our country were regularly confronted by the nauseating and ugly sight of uniformed Customs officials and policemen taking gratifications without qualms and so brazenly doing so.
“Incompetence in the management of national resource led the nation to accumulate huge internal and external debts and to run into serious balance of payments difficulties. Government was fast losing its ability to pay for the goods and services contracted or needed. The national economy tottered dangerously on the brink of collapse. Numerous industrial undertakings are at this very moment on the verge of total collapse and many had been forced to close down for lack of raw materials. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs and the sceptre of large-scale retrenchment has already appeared.
“The resultant scarcity of essential commodities was predictably accompanied by spiralling inflation. Frauds and embezzlement of public funds were committed with reckless abandon. Hired assassins and marauders were openly beginning to practise their trade in broad daylight.
“Perpetrators of corrupt practices resorted to arson to cover their trail, resulting in callous destruction of several expensive public buildings and even loss of lives. Incidents of armed robbery multiplied and the state of general lawlessness heralding a chaotic state of affairs, possibly culminating in a bloody uprising and revolution was most imminent.”
Buhari closed his letter by noting that he needed Britain’s cooperation to enable him rid the country of the several anomalies.
“In spite of the huge investment on the 1983 election, there is ample evidence that they were blatantly rigged all round. In reaction, politically motivated strifes engulfed several parts of the country claiming several lives and destroying valuable property. The overall effect was a serious erosion of national stability.
“The attributes constituting the role of government were rendered meaningless; and political party leaders folded their arms in apparent helplessness, unwilling or unable to deal with the situation. In the circumstances, it would be unpatriotic not to act; something had to give.
“We see a need to check the pervasive corruption and the heightened indiscipline and insecurity associated with it. The primary objective for our intervention is to therefore save the tottering nation from imminent collapse; a patriotic rescue operation,” he added.
Thousands were left without electricity and planes were delayed or forced to re-route Sunday as storm Bella caused torrential rain and heavy winds in much of northern France.
Some 12,000 households suffered power cuts in Brittany and Normandy in northern France and up to 6,000 around the Calais region.
Over a third of flights from France’s main airport of Charles de Gaulle in northern Paris suffered delays of an average of 50 minutes due to the storm, the airport operator said.
Three flights heading to the airport were re-routed to Paris Orly airport in the south of Paris while an Aeroflot flight landed in Amsterdam and a plane heading from Luxemburg turned back.
A top flight rugby clash between Pau and Stade Francais scheduled for the afternoon was delayed by three hours after the storm prevented the Paris-based team from taking off.
The winds and rains were due to abate in some areas by the late afternoon but heavy show was forecast on higher ground in the south of the country heading into Monday.
Similar troubles were seen in the south of England where winds reaching 170 kilometres (105 miles) an hour were recorded on the Isle of Wight overnight Saturday to Sunday.
Meanwhile some 20,000 households in Wales had their electricity cut while delays were also seen on railways due to trees falling on the line.
