20 October, 2013

Unbelievable: BBC World News Insults Nigeria On Twitter

Unbelievable: BBC World News Insults Nigeria On Twitter

October 19, 2013 1:47 pm

twitter“Abuja Was Built On Stolen Land” – BBC Writer Alex Preston Insults Nigeria On Twitter. You must have come across this article on other sites. The most touching part of it is that the article was written by a complete stranger who perhaps got the wrong impression from history or local informants.
Whether it’s true or not, read a detail article written by Alex Preston for BBC News below:
When one of Nigeria’s long line of military rulers, General Olusegun Obasanjo, seized the land on which Abuja was to be built in the late 1970s, he could hardly have imagined that the city would remain unfinished 35 years on.
Abuja has a makeshift, haphazard feel to it: A place of bureaucrats and building sites, its streets eerily empty after the buzz of Lagos or the enterprising bustle of Kano.
It is one of the most expensive cities in Africa, and one of the most charmless.
The skyline is dominated by the space-rocket spires of the National Christian Centre and the golden dome of the National Mosque, facing each other pugnaciously across a busy highway at the city’s centre.
Its other striking landmark is the vast construction site of the Millennium Tower, which, if it is ever completed, will be Nigeria’s tallest building.
The skyscraper was intended to mark Abuja’s 20th birthday in 2011.
Now delayed until who-knows-when, hugely over-budget and the subject of numerous official investigations.
All the people of Abuja have to show for the billions invested in the project are two stunted fingers of scaffold-clad concrete.
I had been in Abuja for three days – about two-and-a-half too many – when my friend, Atta, a sociologist, picked me up from my hotel.
We drove out towards Aso Rock, the monolith looming over the presidential palace.
On either side of the road there are complexes of bulky, imposing mansions, most of them unfinished.
Some had empty swimming pools; others had mock-Tudor timbering, but were windowless and often roofless. Atta told me that 65% of the houses in these developments were uninhabited, put up only to launder Abuja’s dirty money.
Like the Millennium Tower, these grandiose schemes are ruins before they are completed, bleak monuments to a city built by kleptocratic politicians on stolen land.
We pulled off the Murtala Mohammed Highway at Mpape Junction, and immediately the road deteriorated.
“I am going to show you the real Abuja,” Atta told me, as his car struggled up a deeply-rutted dirt track.
A warm wind from the desert to the north – the Harmattan – whipped clouds of red dust around us as we climbed through rocky scrubland into the hills.
People began to appear on the streets – men carrying ancient Singer sewing machines, women balancing baskets on their heads.
abuja1
We entered a vast shanty-town of shacks with corrugated iron roofs, slums stacking to the horizon.
Nissan minivans scuttled past – they are called “One Chance” buses, as they barely stop on their manic journeys through these uncharted streets.
Crowds thronged between skinny cows, beneath posters advertising beaming televangelists.
Dance music blared out, interrupted by a muezzin’s call to prayer. Bright-eyed children kicked footballs about.
This was the home of the Gwari people, the original inhabitants of the land where the capital was built.
Hundreds of thousands of them were summarily evicted in the 1970s, and now scrape a living in the hills.
Abuja is itself a Gwari word and, although the city of generals and politicians below us had barely 700,000 inhabitants, two or three million people live in these shanty towns, many of them Gwari.
The Gwari people continue to fight for compensation for the land wrested from them by the Obasanjo government, land now worth more per square kilometre than almost anywhere else in Africa.
We got out and walked through the smoke and dust towards a row of shacks. In one of them, a woman knelt on the ground plucking a chicken, a man above her leaning on a makeshift bar.
Frank and Mary
They were Frank and Mary, Gwari people in their thirties, children of one of the thousands of families originally evicted during the foundation of Abuja.
The four of us sat in the shack sipping Fantas, staring out at the swarming life of the shanty town: Motorbikes and cattle and people, all of them through a veil of reddish dust.
“I trained as an architect,” Frank told me. “I have an education. But I do not have money, I don’t know the right people.
So I work here with my sister. In Abuja, money defines everything.” I ask him about the empty mansions lining the roads into the city.
“That is pseudo-Abuja, a false place. It’s unjust – we should be living in those houses. Instead…”
He gestured to the squalid lean-to that jutted from the back of the bar. Mary looked up from her chicken. “Life here is difficult,” she says.
“Often we can’t see across the street because of the smoke and dust. If it rains, you can’t move for the mud. But we pray hard.”
Frank pulled out a CD. It was Fela Kuti’s Suffering and Smiling. “This,” Frank said, as the music coiled out from an ancient hi-fi, “is the compressed statement of Nigerian society.
We suffer, but we smile. Nothing will change until we get angry, until we stop smiling.”
A storm was coming in, red clouds rolling overhead and thunder crackling down the valleys.
Frank and Mary stood waving to us, the music playing still, as we drove off down the hill, towards pseudo-Abuja.
http://www.medianigeria.com/38077/unbelievable-bbc-world-news-insults-nigeria-twitter/

Shariah, Hisbah Police Arrests15 Prostitutes, Youths With Crazy Haircuts

October 19, 2013 2:01 pm
PoliceShariah, Hisbah Police Arrests15 Prostitutes & Youths With Crazy Haircuts In Kano On Sallah Day.
The Public Relations Officer of the Board, Malam Yusuf Yola, told the newsmen in Kano that the defaulters had been charged to court.
He said that members of the Hisbah corps also arrested deviant youths with crazy haircuts during the festivities.
Yola said that apart from those arrested for prostitution, more than 40 male and female youths were also picked up during the festive period for “misconduct’’ at places of leisure across the state.
According to him, the parents of some of those arrested were invited to the board for discussions and advice and most of the youth were later released.
“For those who had mischievous haircuts, the board made sure that they had clean haircuts before they were released.
http://www.medianigeria.com/38085/shariah-hisbah-police-arrests15-prostitutes-youths-crazy-haircuts/

04 October, 2013

FG to buy made-in-Nigeria vehicles

FG to buy made-in-Nigeria vehicles

By  on October 4, 2013

The Federal Government on Wednesday approved the Automotive Industrial Policy Development Plan for the country.
The decision was taken at the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan.
Through the policy, the government hopes to significantly reduce the high vehicle importation bill, which stood at $3.4bn (N550bn) in 2012.
As a first step, the Federal Government said all vehicles purchased by it would be from local assembly plants, except they were specialised and could not be produced in the country.
The ministers of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku; Federal Capital Territory, Bala Muhammed; and Industry, Trade and Investment,  Olusegun Aganga, briefed State House correspondents at the end of the meeting.
Aganga said the policy was aimed at transforming the Nigerian automotive industry and attracting investments into the sector.
He said a situation where the nation spent N4.2bn on the importation of vehicles into the country in 2010 was eating deep into the foreign reserves.
Aganga said in arriving at the policy, which took about nine months to put together, the government got the input of some car manufacturing giants like Nissan and Toyota.
These companies, he added, would soon announce their investments in the country.
He said, “A transformed automotive industry will realise its potential as a major driver of economic growth and diversification, job creation, local value addition, and technology acquisition.
“These recommendations were adopted at various conferences and consultations with stakeholders, including some original equipment manufacturers. After deliberation, the Council approved the Automotive Industrial Policy Development Plan.
“Council also approved that the government should direct that all vehicle purchased by the government should be from the local
 assembly plants unless it is specialised in nature and the NAC has certified that it is not produced in Nigeria
“The Council approved that the recommendation should be backed by appropriate legislation to give comfort to investors that there will be no abrupt change in policy.”
He added that his ministry had taken note of what led to the collapse of similar policies in the past and had taken measures to avoid the same fate for the new policy.
According to the minister, highlights of the new policy include the establishment of three automotive clusters across the country, the revival of the metal/steel sector and the tyre manufacturing industry to support the sector.
Aganga added that the government would work on tariff to encourage local manufacture and discourage importation of vehicles.
Mohammed said the Council also approved the rehabilitation and expansion of the outer Southern Expressway in the FCT from the Villa Roundabout to the OSEX/Ring Road 1(RR1) junction, including five interchanges, in the sum of N39bn.
He said the project was aimed at ensuring free flow of traffic and significantly reduce travel time in and out of the city.
The minister said, “The existing segment of the OSEX from the Villa roundabout to RR1 is only partially developed with a two-lane main carriageway and one two-lane service carriageway as against the 10-lane expressway provided in the Abuja Master Plan.”