The United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported in May 2005 that more than 7.3 million Nigerian children of school age were not in schools. The ugly statistic has its grave social consequences, including the spiraling rate of illiteracy and the dramatic rise in crimes committed by homeless street kids in Nigeria’s major towns and cities.
Across Nigeria, there are millions of children who are neither cared for nor have the prospects of personal fulfillment for the future. Their forlorn outlook paints a graphic portrait of their state of helplessness. Bereft of hope and cut off from the sustenance of family ties, these children roam the streets in a daze. They appear unkempt, emaciated, a picture of innocence defiled. Speak to them and they reveal a total absence of hope regarding their future. They make their “homes” in some of the filthiest, most dangerous parts of cities and towns, including abandoned buildings, underneath overhead bridges, and near refuse dumps which they scavenge for food.
They usually retire to their dangerous “abodes” at dusk and dash out early in the morning before they are seen by the prying eyes of the police or rightful owners of some of the structures that serve as haven.
In a country where the vast majority of the populace is racked by abject poverty, the state of street children is particularly grim.
Fela Awosika, a photojournalist who documents street kids across Nigeria, sets out to keep the future of these disadvantaged children firmly before our eyes.
WHAT IS KILLING US MOSTLY IN NIGERIA NOBODY SEEMS TO CARES.
She said that she like to be wearing bikinis,swimsuit like BEYONCE KNOWLE , an she is getting more fat. News reaching us from reliable source revealed that OMOSEXY said she cannot wear hot shot,swimsuit on beaches like other sexy celebrities,she said one of her close friend in USA advice her to do so because of fat body.
I GUESS MAYBE AKON ADVISE HER TO DO SO (NEW CLOSE FRIEND?) I SMELL SOMETHINGS.
A Boeing 777 operated by Asiana Airlines crashed while landing Saturday at San Francisco International Airport, an FAA spokesman told CNN.
Flight 214 left Seoul's Incheon International Airport earlier Saturday and flew 10 hours and 23 minutes to California, according to FlightAware, a website that offers tracking services for private and commercial air traffic.
Anthony Castorani, who witnessed the flight land from a nearby hotel, said he saw the plane touch the ground then noticed a larger plume of white smoke.
"You heard a pop and you immediately saw a large, brief fireball that came from underneath the aircraft," he told CNN. "It began to cartwheel."
Video taken soon after the crash and posted on YouTube showed dark gray smoke rising from the plane, which appeared to be upright. That smoke later became white, even as fire crews continued to douse the plane.
The top of the aircraft was charred and, in spots, gone entirely, according to video from CNN affiliate KTVU. The plane was on its belly, with no landing gear evident and the rear tail of the plane gone.
Fire trucks were on site, while first responders could be seen walking outside the aircraft.
Evacuation slides could be seen extending from one side of the aircraft, from which there was no apparent smoke.
There were a few clouds in the sky around the time of the crash, and temperatures were about 65 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. Winds were about 8 miles per hour.
CNN's Dana Bash, who was heading to the airport at the time of the crash, said she noticed smoke emanating from the runway. She said she had not noticed any arrivals or departures since the crash.
Asiana Airlines is one of South Korea's two major airlines, the other being Korean Air.
It operates many of its flights out of Incheon International Airport, which is the largest airport in South Korea and considered among one of the busiest in the world.
San Francisco International Airport, located some 12 miles south of downtown San Francisco, is California's second busiest, behind LAX in Los Angeles.
An angry Muslim crowd in Upper Egypt beating and stripping two Coptic Christian women in broad daylight in a rural area.
The video opens with a crowd shouting "Nasara" (Christians) before the two women are set upon by this crowd. The video shows many passers-by having no visible reaction to the events. The accents of the attackers seem to support claims that the attack happened in Upper Egypt. If you are a Christian you have a duty to share and expose this persecution of christian women in islamic dominated countries, Will you speak out?
The Bluefish caves in the Yukon contain evidence of migration and habitation by peoples from Asia to North America. Butchered mammoth bones, microblades with a wedge-shaped core, and trimming flakes of human manufacture were found by archaeologists Jacques Cinq-mars and William Irving. Unfortunately, earth shifts and geological disturbances have caused the site to contain no original cultural context. The significant element of this site was the discovery of a group of excavated bones, which were identified as horses & human fish skeleton remains.
A police officer attached to and AIC Limited, owned by Harry Akande on Tuesday threatened to 'gun down' an official of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos.
AIC on Tuesday stormed the airport premises to reclaim the land which was taken away from the company but was resisted by FAAN's Aviation Security officials, who threw caution to the wind and battled members of the AIC, including throwing stones at Mr Akande.
AIC had leased the said land to FAAN about 10 years ago for the development of a hotel facility at the international wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos. A forthnight ago, FAAN had won a case against AIC over the land as the Federal High Court in Lagos set aside the decision of arbitration that awarded the company $48 million to be paid by FAAN, as compensation for ejection of AIC from the land.
While FAAN insisted that the land in question belongs to it by virtue of the Federal High Court judgment; AIC also said the court never ordered the agency to take over the parcel of land immediately.
Eyewitness account said FAAN officials bulldozed their way into the barricaded land, pulled down the gates and commenced clearing of the land with two tractors and its personnel.
Nigeria’s leadership has never thrived on individuals’ aspiration, as the recruitment process veers off weirdly from normal. It has always been some mutative force casting aside whoever nursed the ambition to whoever they please. It is a nation that has survived on the blood of sacrificial lambs, to leave the country in the hands of who never wanted to rule, a classical case of conspiracy of an evil hue.
President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan has been a child of circumstance from the start, rising, politically speaking, from obscurity to become whatever any man alive or dead would wish. He confessed that he never dreamt of becoming the president of Nigeria. Awo, on the other hand, would have given a limb to be in Jonathan’s shoes. Or at the very least, wished for the same destiny for himself but it never came his way. Awo wanted to be Nigeria’s president. Some historians believe his betrayal of Biafra was part of his calculations to get there. Yet, everything ended as a daydream for the late sage.
Obasanjo derided the late Awo as an example of this sad Nigerian reality when he said many years ago: “A man whose life ambition eluded him deserves my sympathy”, further noting rather uncharitably that he achieved when he was barely forty what Awo laboured for life and failed to accomplish – to rule Nigeria. Power is not like wealth, which they say chooses its own path and its entry a mystery as its exit in a man’s life. Some have mastered power in Nigeria and its art, thus appear to have conquered it of their own accord. That may explain why Margret Thatcher had to say, “Being in power is like being a lady; if you have to say you are you aren’t”. Great men and women court power. In Nigeria particularly, it has remained most elusive to those who needed it the most, forcing many to insist that Nigerian nation has never had its own leader.
Indeed the bewildering inability of the late sage (Awo) to rule Nigeria even for 24 hours as he was known to have once begged may remain legendary. It denotes the unwavering ‘providence’ standing accused for taking it upon itself to select the nation’s leaders and what is more, making a mess of it. It has always saddled the country with the wrong kind of leaders and underdevelopment is the result.
It is indeed the Nigerian story: those who wanted to rule the nation never came close to power: Zik, Awo, Ahmadu Bello, and many more tired out trying and woefully failing, and may have all died feeling politically unfulfilled. Only reluctant leaders, both military and civilians, suddenly found themselves there without any vision and sense of mission for the nation.
Obasanjo remains the most incredible case study in any attempt to put this phenomenon in perspective. He holds a Guinness Book record as a 2 -era President of a country purely by accident, contributing nothing to each occasion to ascend the apex power except perhaps saying yes to this providential beckon. He was said to be crying when he was prevailed upon to succeed Ramat Murtala Muhammad when the latter fell under the hail of Dimka’s bullets. That was how the nation came about the double-barrel history of Murtala-Obasanjo regime in 1976.
Again, in 1999, the nation was saddled with another reluctant Obasanjo. He was asked by journalists when he was brought out of Yola prison if he would aspire to lead Nigeria again. Shocked, Obasanjo retorted: “How many Presidents do you want to make out of me?” But few months later, Nigeria was busy making another President out of a reluctant Obasanjo.
Today, the history is not different. President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan left it to be decided as usual. After all, like past Nigerian leaders, he never harbored any personal ambition all along, so it will be mean-spirited to suggest he should not have allowed himself to be goaded into it or allowing the force to sustain his presidency beyond 2015. The President is true to form for remaining at the mercy of the providence that has been producing reluctant Presidents for Nigeria.
The President became Vice President because an Obasanjo said so, and President because the constitution imposed it and likely to return in 2015 because the Ijaw nation insists. These are all forces beyond and outside the incumbent.
Historically, we can also say such unseen hands produced an Alhaji Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister of Nigeria (1959 -1966) even when he was not the leader of his party (Northern People’s Congress). In parliamentary practice and tradition, for not being the leader of the NPC, it was unusual for Tafawa Balewa to become prime minister. The same force produced Generals JTU Aguiyi- Ironsi and Yakubu Gowon as heads of state, even when they hatched no coups. It nearly made a mistake with Murtala who really came with the ambition and desire to rule Nigeria and make a difference. But the force quickly corrected the ‘Murtala error’ by violently replacing him with a reluctant General Olusegun Obasanjo.
Then also, a certain Shehu Shagari printed his beautiful posters to go to the Nigerian Senate. But the same ‘providence’ said: “No, thou art Mr. President Sir!” One Muhammad Buhari came knocking with an ambition to rule and got knocked off quickly by one experimentalist I.B. Babangida who appeared surprised that power had been that close without knowing it even after risking his life to ease out Dimka and his weird dream. (IBB was said to be on a mission to rescue his own military career following a looming probe. His coming to power therefore could be the same way Eyadema of Togo and Samuel Doe of Liberia shot their ways to power to save their skins and career!)
Then came in one far more reluctant Ernest Shonekan in the interim who told ‘them’ to come for the mantle anytime they wanted it back since he was only a defacto head ab-initio. So, when Shonekan saw dark-goggled Sani Abacha escorted to his Aguda House by some young officers, he handed him his pre-signed resignation and prerecorded video tape from the window. Abacha, another providential head of state of Nigeria had emerged, anointed and planted as head of state-in-waiting, by an IBB that was stepping aside, and, courtesy of the same providence, as others, he went into power to represent the interest rather than nation. When he started getting ideas of his own with his transmutation plan with ‘the five fingers of a leprous hand’ (as Ige described our political parties then), same strange force took him out of the scene too.
Of course Abdusalami Abubakar wept profusely for the death of Abacha and ran scared for the 11 months he precariously hung on the throne before the second return of a recurring, reluctant Obasanjo. Obasanjo however wanted power by himself with his Third-Term gambit but the project, despite gulping billions, still collapsed like a castle of sand by the grace of the same forces.
Then, the same Obasanjo, acting God and electorates combined, singlehandedly produced a President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, a sick man with well-known history of kidney dialysis, who had secured an appointment to teach Chemistry after his tenure as governor of Katsina, and an amazed Goodluck Jonathan became his deputy. But death came and good luck or providence or both smiled on Jonathan to become the President of the most populous black nation on earth!
The real problem is not whether or not the president continues beyond 2015 but what happens to a nation where its leaders have no vision and sense of mission. The Holy Scripture says that without vision a nation/people perish. So, even religion recognizes that a strong correlation exists between vision and progress of a people or nation. Part of the fundamental problems of Nigeria is the fact that those to make the difference are never allowed to positions. Imagine where Nigeria would have been if Zik, Awo, or Ahmadu Bello had ruled. Instead, they were all brushed aside by the strange force forging past, present and future of the Nigerian nation and its destiny.
This force has colonial origin and was inherited and sustained by the military. It is a counteracting force the nation must shake off, through genuine democratic practice, if she will thrive and end her endless tales of woes.
Ola Orekunrin (center) is the founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, the first air ambulance service in West Africa Ola Orekunrin was studying to become a doctor in the UK a few years ago when her younger sister fell seriously ill while traveling in Nigeria. The 12-year-old girl, who'd gone to the West African country on holiday with relatives, needed urgent care but the nearest hospital couldn't deal with her condition.
Orekunrin and her family immediately began looking for an air ambulance service to rapidly transport the girl, a sickle cell anemia sufferer, to a more suitable healthcare facility. They searched all across West Africa but were stunned to find out there was none in the whole region.
"The nearest one at the time was in South Africa," remembers Orekunrin. "They had a 12-hour activation time so by the time they were ready to activate, my sister was dead.
"It was really a devastating time for me and I started thinking about whether I should be in England talking about healthcare in Africa, or I should be in Africa dealing with healthcare and trying to do something about it."
Orekunrin did the latter. Motivated by the tragic death of her sister, the young doctor decided to leave behind a high-flying job in the UK to take to the Nigerian skies and address the vital issue of urgent healthcare in Africa's most populous country.
Read this: Private jets spread their wings in Africa
A pioneering entrepreneur with an eye for opportunity, Orekunrin set up Flying Doctors Nigeria, the first air ambulance service in West Africa, transporting victims of medical emergencies, including industrial workers from the country's booming oil and gas sector.
"There was a situation in Nigeria where there were only two or three very good hospitals and they were sometimes a two, three, four-day journey away from the places where incidents happened," says Orekunrin. "We also have a huge oil and gas industry and at that time there was no coordinated system for moving people from the offshore environment to a hospital to receive treatment." We save lives by moving these patients and providing a high level of care en route. Ola Orekunrin, Flying Doctors Nigeria
Currently in its third year, the Lagos-based company has so far airlifted about 500 patients, using a fleet of planes and helicopters to rapidly move injured workers and critically ill people from remote areas to hospitals.
"From patients with road traffic trauma, to bomb blast injuries to gunshot wounds, we save lives by moving these patients and providing a high level of care en route," says Orekunrin.
"Many of our roads are poorly maintained, so emergency transport by road during the day is difficult. At night, we have armed robbers on our major highways; coupled with poor lighting and poor state of the roads themselves, emergency transport by road is deadly for both patients and staff."
Flying helicopters, speaking Japanese
At 27, there isn't much Orekunrin hasn't achieved.
Born in London, she grew up in a foster home in the charming seaside town of Lowestoft in the south-east of England.
Aged 21, Orekunrin had already graduated from the University of York as a qualified doctor. She was then awarded the MEXT Japanese Government Scholarship and moved to Japan to conduct research in the field of regenerative medicine. I wanted to facilitate getting the right patient, to the right facility, within the right time frame for that particular illness. Ola Orekunrin, Flying Doctors Nigeria
After moving back to Europe the young doctor looked set for a promising career in medicine in the UK. But her desire to improve healthcare services in West Africa brought her back to her roots.
Orekunrin quit her job, sold her assets and went on to study evacuation models and air ambulance services in other developing countries before launching her ambitious venture, which enables her to combine her "deep love for medicine and Africa" with her growing passion for flying -- Orekunrin is also a also a trainee helicopter pilot.
"I wanted to find a way that I can facilitate people who were critically ill," she says. "Get them to see a doctor, and not just any doctor -- I wanted to facilitate getting the right patient to the right facility, within the right time frame for that particular illness, and that's why I came to start the air ambulance."
Last month, the World Economic Forum recognized Orekunrin's achievements by naming her amongst its prestigious Young Global Leaders class of 2013, a group it describes as the best of today's leaders under the age of 40.
"It came as a surprise to me actually," she says of the honor. "I'm really flattered and really happy."
Trauma epidemic
Nigeria, Africa's second-biggest economy, is the continent's top producer of oil, boasting huge petroleum and natural gas reserves.
The industry's potential, coupled with a growing financial services sector, is expected to help drive further demand for companies such as Flying Doctors Nigeria, which works on a retainership basis with the public sector, wealthy individuals and oil and gas companies.
Yet Orekunrin says that there are still several challenges that need to be navigated to successfully run a company like hers in the West African country. There should be more focus on the trauma epidemic that Africa currently faces Ola Orekunrin, Flying Doctors Nigeria
"The aviation business is very expensive in Nigeria," she says. "Keeping costs down is always a challenge," she adds, noting that red tape and bureaucracy are also testing small businesses' endurance.
But despite the challenges, Orekunrin remains determined to bring about change in Nigeria's healthcare system. "I want to achieve a proper use of the healthcare sector in Nigeria," she says.
Read this: One woman's mission to fix water crisis
Looking ahead, Orekunrin says her goal is to continue improving access to treatment while focusing on the pre-hospital and in-hospital management of injuries. She says that whilst much attention and funding is directed toward infectious diseases, Africa is also facing a big problem treating physical injuries and wounds.
"Eighty percent of the world trauma occurs in low-middle income countries just like Nigeria," she says. "I feel there should be more focus on the trauma epidemic that Africa currently faces."
"In the UK, I would see one gunshot wound every three or four years. In Nigeria, I see one gunshot wound every three-four days. Add in the road-traffic trauma, falls from heights, industrial injuries, stab sounds, injuries from domestic violence and you see a huge problem that definitely needs addressing
It is being hailed as the holy grail for power, the biggest hydroelectric project ever built that would harness sub-Saharan Africa's greatest river and light up half of the continent.
But will the ambitious plan to tame the mighty Congo River, a mega-project first conceived in the 1970s, finally get going and what will be its actual impact?
Last month, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced in Paris that the construction of the first phase of a new set of energy projects at the country's Inga Falls would begin in October 2015. The new $12 billion development, dubbed Inga 3, is expected to have a power output of nearly 4,800 megawatts (MW), with South Africa agreeing to buy half of the electricity generated. Grand Inga site. Click to expand Grand Inga site. Click to expand
But the DRC government's bold vision ultimately involves five further stages that would complete the "Grand Inga" mega-project, giving it an astonishing capacity of 40,000 MW -- that's twice as much as the Three Gorges dam in China, currently the world's largest hydro project.
When completed, Grand Inga could provide more than 500 million people with renewable energy, say its proponents.
"A myth dreamed of for 40 years, Grand Inga is becoming a reality with an action plan spread over several plants which will be added in stages," the DRC government said in a statement after the Paris meeting.
Nigeria Government should learned from DRC and build 21st century power plant /Nuclear power that can supply stable light for her citizenry for another century to come!, YES WE CAN!
PLEASE REASON BEFORE YOU COMMENT. WHAT YOU WILL DO THAT WILL DRAMATICALLY CHANGE THE LIFE OF ORDINARY NIGERIANS ON THE STREET AN DRAMATICALLY CHANGE NIGERIA AS A WHOLE? DONT LIE OOO
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