Category Archives: Humanitarian

Child-trafficking booms:Ordeal of child-hawkers

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By Prisca Sam-Duru
In 2008, Mazi Amaechi paid a woman (names withheld) from Ebonyi State but married to an  Imo State indigene, the sum of N8,000 and a teenage boy named Onukwube was brought to live with them as a house-help. Initially, there was communication problem because they couldn’t understand each other’s dialect.

children-hawking

The worst of it all was that Onukwube was 15 years and yet had never been  in school. Nevertheless, because of his passion for education, having retired as a teacher, Mazi Amaechi enrolled the boy at the  Central School Umuozu to begin primary one with a promise to train him up to secondary school if he did well.
In 2010, Onukwube was sent back to Ebonyi for exhibiting traits and character of a vagabond. Not long after, several other teenagers were brought into other families in the  same community by the same woman who brought Onukwube to Imo State. She confessed she has made a fortune out of the trade.

Onukwube is just one out of so many Ebonyi State indigenes who are today, not privileged to have basic education. In the rural areas, most of them join their parents in the farms, while outside Ebonyi State, they serve in homes as house-helps and as street hawkers especially in Lagos metropolis.

Just like there are human traffickers who transport Nigerian girls to foreign countries where they are introduced to sex trade, these young boys are brought to Lagos by merchants. The level of timidity amongst these youths is alarming. Some who are as old as 20 years and even more said they saw electric bulbs for the first time in the city and marvelled at the sight which is one reason they are easily deceived by the rich who promise them fortunes prior to migrating to Lagos.

From investigations, they serve their bosses by hawking bottled water and drinks, pop corn, sausage rolls, plantain chips and ice cream on the roads . They are set free after three years of serving their masters and with the little money they saved, they continue life by hawking puff puff , phone accessories, glasses and frames on the streets or begin food-stuff business while others buy motorcycles on hire purchase for Okada business.

Azubuike,27, has been serving his master whose name he refused to disclose, for close to three years. He sells cold drinks and water and according to him, “I make gain of N100 from each pack which is 12 bottles and I make more gain when the weather is hot and there is traffic. I would have loved to buy Okada when I am free but because of what Fashola has done to Okada business, maybe I will look for another trade that will fetch me more gain”.
The major reason for urban drift is no doubt, lack of amenities such as electricity, pipe-borne water, roads, schools that offer quality education and of course, industries that can keep the labour force positively busy. It is sad to discover that most of these amenities are lacking in most Ebonyi communities. Also, one of the reasons for the creation of the state is for grassroots development but regrettably, since Ebonyi State was carved out of Enugu and Abia States on October 1st, 1996, most of these amenities are yet to be made available in most of the communities in the state with the exception of the capital city, Abakaliki.

Mr Chukwu Emeka who hails from Ndiokeishieke village in Ebonyi State is one of the few exceptions of Ebonyi indigenes who are fortunate to have attended school. He holds SSCE, courtesy of his uncle, a primary six graduate who brought him to Lagos and saw him through both primary and secondary schools. He is presently into production of electricity poles in Ikorodu, Lagos.

Commenting on the state of his community, Emeka said that “Ndiokeishioke village in terms of development is very backward.There is no electricity, no motorable roads and no pipe-borne water. It is sad that my people who are mostly farmers, cannot access the town easily because even when they struggle to produce large quantity of farm produce, they find it almost impossible to travel to the cities to sell them. It is surprising that the major means of movement within the villages is still bicycle and it is even more surprising that not all can afford one. The people can best be described as living far below poverty level and this is the major reason the youths fall into the trap of traffickers who promise to turn their lives around for good but end up using them as slaves”.

According to Emeka, as it is in his village, so it is in so many other communities. It was discovered, however, that there are several reasons why most Ebonyi youths who are supposed to be in school are hawking on the streets of Lagos. The State has vast lands and one school is usually located in a village that is several miles away from other villages, and one single school is meant to serve not less than 15 communities.

This Emeka noted, “makes it difficult for indigenes to access education and even when it is free education, in most cases, parents end up paying so much through levies. Most of the   teachers are not diligent and the students themselves do not help matters either. You will discover that most often, during school hours, students play and fight or work in the teachers’ farms which span several acres, until closing time”.
Mr Alex is another Ebonyi indigene who sells foodstuffs. He has about four teenagers who instead of being in school, are helping him out in his shop located at Gberigbe, Ikorodu, Lagos. When he was asked his reasons for bringing them, he said that, “Things are not easy with people in the village and my bringing them to assist in my shop is a way of helping them and their parents. As soon as they have mastered the trade, I will assist them to start their own businesses.”

Considering the level of neglect explained by Emeka, one wonders if these communities have representatives at the state and federal levels and if they are  doing anything to alleviate the sufferings of their people.

Explaining further, Emeka said that “you may not have a single graduate in a whole community which is why my people do not have enough representatives at the state level. There are no rural development projects, no single government presence in the communities, no bridges and most times, a small stream, can cut off a whole community from the others, especially, when the river is in full capacity during rainy season.”

Continuing, he disclosed that “there are reported cases of people who were swept away with their bicycles by Okpokpo river which is between Ekebeligwe and NdiokeIshieke where there is no bridge. They were reported missing until their bodies were seen floating on another river in a neighbouring village. Some, who were lucky to have escaped carried their bicycles on their heads while crossing. Also, it is surprising that what some of these communities refer to as roads are actually worse than bush paths because, two people coming from opposite directions with their bicycles, cannot go through except one waits for the other.”

On health matters, Chukwu Emeka said that, “You will hardly find a single Primary Health Care in communities in Ebonyi except in Abakaliki. A single  auxiliary nurse attends to so many patients from various communities.  Ebonyi indigenes are hard-working people and yet, from year to year, they remain poor.”

Another heart-breaking issue is the issue of male youth corps members posted to complement the teachers but rather than teach, they end up impregnating the girls.

“Because of the girls’ naivety, a single youth corps member ends up impregnating between eight to ten girls who are later married off to old men and that ends their education. Friday Nwokpoku, an ex-student of Ndiokeishieke Grammer school is an example of  secondary school graduates produced in this area. In 2012, Friday took SSCE and after paying N30,000, scored F9 in all subjects just like most of his mates.”

Sadly Emeka said, “They place no value on education. These are part of the reasons  for the mass urban drift by Ebonyi state youths to the cities and the resultant effect has been detrimental.

Environmentalists Decry Indiscriminate Sewage Disposal In Yenagoa-NAN

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By News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)

Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), an NGO, on Monday urged residents of Bayelsa to stop indiscriminate disposal of human and industrial wastes in the state.

Mr Alagoa Morris, Head of Operations of the NGO, told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the organization was disturbed by lack of sewage treatment plants and disposal system in the state.

Morris noted that the development had led to uncontrolled and indiscriminate disposal of untreated sewage and industrial wastes into water channels across the state.

He noted that discharge of untreated sewage and industrial effluents posed danger to the environment as the water channels in the state were interconnected.

“Field monitors of the Environmental Rights Action show that because there are no approved sewage dump sites, sewage truck operators resorted to dumping sewage indiscriminately; sometimes with the approval of some unscrupulous community folks.”

“One community environment where this has been going on is Opolo-Epie, at locations along the Tombia-Amassoma road and the untreated sewage and other liquid chemicals, even crude oil are dumped into swamps and other flowing bodies of water in the environment.”

“Unfortunately, neither the state Sanitation Authority nor the Ministry of Environment has made any pronouncement on this negative environmental trend or taken any other positive actions to control the situation in the interest of the general public,” Morris said.

The NGO further appealed to relevant government agencies to control the activities of sewage disposal operators in the state to forestall an epidemic that would pose a threat to public health.

ERA/FoEN also called for the establishment of a sewage and refuse treatment plants to take care of the increasing human population and activities of oil and gas firms that generate oil related wastes.

It urged the state Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Sanitation Authority to urgently engage all relevant stakeholders to arrest the current trend in the interest of public health.

Spain smashes Nigerians’ voodoo prostitution ring

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Some of the Nigerian Prostitutes deported from Spain

Some of the Nigerian Prostitutes deported from Spain

. The ladies lured into prostitution are from Benin City

Spanish police said Sunday they had broken up a ring that smuggled in women from Nigeria and forced them into street prostitution by burning them with irons and using voodoo rituals.

Police arrested six Nigerian nationals, including the suspected woman ringleader, as part of an investigation launched last year after one of the prostitutes filed a complaint with the authorities.

“The control exercised over women was total, involving verbal threats as well as physical violence and various voodoo ceremonies to terrorise them,” police said in a statement.

“The ring caused them serious injury through bites or by using an iron to cause second-degree burns.”

The ring recruited women in Benin City, Edo State, whose husbands and fathers had died and who were struggling to raise their children.
File photo: Deported Prostitutes

They transported the women overland to Morocco and then smuggled them on small wooden boats into Spain where they were forced to work as street prostitutes in Barcelona and Malaga.

Spanish police have swooped several times in past years on similar prostitution rings that used the threat of voodoo curses to frighten their victims into obedience.

Before leaving Nigeria, the rings often take their victims to shrines where they swear to pay their debts to the group and not to denounce them to the police.

The women leave fingernails, hair, underwear and other personal items at the shrines which they are told will give voodoo priests the power to harm them wherever they are in the world.

Fearful Muslims shelter in Monastery‏

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LASHIO, Myanmar (AP) — More than 1,000 Muslims who fled Myanmar’s latest bout of sectarian violence huddled Thursday in a Buddhist monasteryguarded by army soldiers as calm returned to this northeastern city, though burnt out buildings leveled by Buddhist rioters still smoldered.

Myamer in rubbles

Myamer in rubbles

The army transported terrified Muslim families by the truckload out of a neighborhood in Lashio where overturned cars and motorcycles that had been charred a day earlier left black scars on the red earth.

“We heard things could get worse, so we waved down soldiers and asked them for help,” said 59-year-old Khin Than, who arrived at the monastery Thursday morning with her four children and sacks of luggage along with several hundred other Muslims. “We left because we’re afraid of being attacked.”

The violence in Lashio this week highlights how anti-Muslim unrest has slowly spread across Myanmar since starting last year in western Rakhine state and hitting the central city of Meikhtila in March. President Thein Sein’s government, which inherited power from the military two years ago, has been heavily criticized for failing to contain the violence.

In Lashio on Thursday, Buddhist monks organized meals for the newly arrived refugees, who huddled together in several buildings in the monastery compound.

Although a few Buddhist men could still be seen Thursday riding motorbikes with crude weapons such as sharpened bamboo poles, no new violence was reported. Several banks and shops reopened as residents emerged to look at destroyed Muslim shops. Trucks of soldiers and police crisscrossed main roads. They guarded the ruins of Muslim businesses that were reduced to ashes on Tuesday and Wednesday, erecting roadblocks from twisted debris.
At one corner, where the charred remains of a three-story building still smoldered, Muslim residents sorted through rubble for anything salvageable. One family packed electronics from their shop into the back of a truck.
A woman who had fled a mob a day earlier was still in a state of shock.
“These things should not happen,” said the woman, Aye Tin, a Muslim resident who slept overnight in a local Red Cross compound. “Most Muslims are staying off the streets. They’re afraid they’ll be attacked or killed if they go outside.”
The rioting began Tuesday after a Muslim man splashed gasoline on a Buddhist woman and set her on fire. Buddhist mobs responded by burning down several Muslim-owned shops, a mosque and an Islamic orphanage. Roving motorcyclists continued the violence on Wednesday, leaving one person dead and four injured.
Presidential spokesman Ye Htut said 25 people had been detained so far. He said all those arrested were from Lashio.
The violence is casting fresh doubt over whether Thein Sein’s government can or will act to contain the racial and religious intolerance plaguing a deeply fractured nation still struggling to emerge from half a century of military rule. Muslims, who account for about 4 percent of Myanmar’s roughly 60 million people, have been the main victims of the violence since it began last year, but so far most criminal trials have involved prosecutions of Muslims, not members of the Buddhist majority.
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Associated Press writer Aye Aye Win contributed to this report from Yangon, Myanmar.

At least 1 dead, over 20 injured after tornadoes slam Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa

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Tornado on the surge

Tornado on the surge

At least one person has been killed and 21 injured in Oklahoma as a severe storm system generated several tornadoes Sunday in Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa, leveling neighborhoods and sending frightened residents scurrying for shelter.

The tornadoes, high winds and hail across the Midwest were part of a massive, northeastward-moving storm system that stretched from Texas to Minnesota.

Victims and emergency responders might not get much of reprieve as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center was forecasting similar weather for Monday over much of the same area.

At least four separate twisters touched down in central Oklahoma late Sunday afternoon, including one near the town of Shawnee, 35 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, that laid waste to much of a mobile home park. Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Wood confirmed to Fox News Sunday that at least one person had been killed in the town.

Authorities tell the Associated Press the 79-year-old man’s  body was found in an open area of the neighborhood.

A storm spotter told the National Weather Service that the tornado “scoured” the landscape in the park and an area along Interstate 40. The highway has been closed because of overturned tractor-trailers that now litter the road.

Across the state, 21 people were injured, not including those who suffered bumps and bruises and chose not to visit a hospital, said Keli Cain, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. Gov. Mary Fallin declared an emergency for 16 Oklahoma counties that suffered from severe storms and flooding during the weekend.

A tornado grazed the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond Sunday afternoon, dropping hail as large as grapefruit and damaging roofs and structures before heading east. Aerial flyovers in Wellston, northeast of Oklahoma City, showed significant property damage.

“I knew it was coming,” said Edmond resident Randy Grau, who huddled with his wife and two young boys in their Edmond’s home’s safe room when the tornado hit. He said he peered out his window as the weather worsened and believed he saw a flock of birds heading down the street.

“Then I realized it was swirling debris,” Grau said. “That’s when we shut the door of the safe room.

“I probably had them in there for 10 minutes.”

Dozen of counties in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri were placed under tornado watches and warnings that were in effect through late Sunday.

In Kansas, an “violent and extremely dangerous tornado” was spotted in the southwest side of Wichita near the Mid-Continent Airport, according to the National Weather Service.

Carl Brewer, the mayor of Wichita, told Fox News that the city was hit harder by high winds and golf ball sized hail than anything from the tornado.

“That alone, and the rain, actually just really did a number on the city,” he said. “It was so bad you think a tornado came through.”

Brewer said hail ripped through the sides of houses in Wichita, in addition to breaking windows and damaging cars.

But Randy Duncan, Wichita’s emergency management director, told Fox News that he has not yet heard of any local reports of injuries of deaths stemming from the storm.

In Iowa, a tornado touched down 30 miles west of Des Moines, the National Weather Service said, according to the Des Moines Register.

More severe storms are also in the forecast in Oklahoma a day after large hail fell in the state’s southwest and electricity was knocked out to thousands.

“The overall environment appears quite favorable for tornadoes,” the SPC outlook stated, according to the Kansas City Star.

The center says the greatest risk for storms in Oklahoma is in the far north, around the Bartlesville area. Overall, the cities included in the area of moderate risk are Kansas City, Wichita, Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

In Enid on Saturday, a police officer was injured in high winds when his cruiser was struck by an object. Area emergency manager Mike Honigsberg told The Oklahoman that the car may have been hit by a cattle trough lifted by the wind. In Oklahoma City, an officer was trapped for a time when surrounded by fallen utility lines.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more: 
http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2013/05/20/oklahoma-braces-for-severe-storms/#ixzz2TormGN7K

Chinua Achebe under fire over attack on Awo, Gowon

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Chinua Achebe

Literary giant Prof. Chinua Achebe has stirred the hornets’ nest, with his claim that war-time Head of State General Yakubu Gowon and the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo formulated policies that promoted genocide against the Igbo.
In his newly released civil war memoirs, There was a country, Achebe said: “Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people-mothers, children, babies, civilians-lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria.”
Quoting the Oxford Dictionary, the celebrated writer said genocide is “the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group …The UN General Assembly defined it in 1946 as …a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.”
He said: “Throughout the conflict, the Biafrans consistently charged that the Nigerians had a design to exterminate the Igbo people from the face of the earth. This calculation, the Biafrans insisted, was predicated on a holy jihad proclaimed by mainly Islamic extremists in the Nigerian Army and supported by the policies of economic blockade that prevented shipments of humanitarian aid, food and supplies to the needy in Biafra .”
On Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was the Vice Chairman of the Federal Executive Council and Minister of Defence, Achebe said: “The wartime cabinet of General Gowon, the military ruler, it should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals, like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, among others, who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies. A statement credited to Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate: all is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder’.
“It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on the surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbo at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose with the Nigeria-Biafra war, his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case, it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.”
Achebe’s views provoked anger yesterday.
Reacting yesterday, Mr. Ayo Opadokun who was Assistant Director of Organisation of the late Chief Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and later Secretary of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), described the Achebe assertion as “typical”.
“It is a reharsh of the perverted intellectual laziness which he had exhibited in the past in matters related to Chief Obafemi Awolowo. When Achebe described Awo as a Yoruba irredentist, what he expected was that Awo should fold his arms to allow the Igbo race led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, to preside over the affairs of the Yoruba nation,” Opadokun said.
Opadokun pointed out that some of his colleagues who played prominent roles in liberating Nigeria from the clutches of military rule, such as Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (rtd), Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe (rtd), Dr. Arthur Nwankwo, Alhaji Abulaziz Ude and others who he described as “men of honour and integrity”, are Igbo. But he found it difficult to believe that a scholar of Achebe’s stature could be so unforgiving.
He said, “Let our Igbo brothers be reminded that about three-quarters of their assets not in the eastern Region are in Lagos and we have been very liberal and accommodating. We have allowed them to live undisturbed.”
Senator Biyi Durojaiye shares Opadokun’s view. He said: “My view is that you don’t expect somebody on the receiving end of a war to say something pleasant about the winners.
“I don’t share Achebe’s view that Awolowo did all he did for personal political aggarandisement. It was all in the process of keeping Nigeria one. What he and General Gowon did was in the process of preserving the integrity of Nigeria .”
He urged the Igbo to be more charitable, seeing that both sides of the war are now benefiting from its outcome. He enjoined all to join hands in facing the challenges of the moment, insisting that the way to go is for all Nigerians to support a Sovereign National Conference and restructuring of the polity.
Mr. Jacob Omosanya who participated actively in Action Group politics as a member of the Action Group Youth Association AGYA), said Achebe and many of his kinsmen in public life are tribalistic and “that is what he has exhibited in this new book.”
“It is not new. He canvassed similar views in The trouble with Nigeria. Dr. Azikiwe and his people should be grateful to the Yoruba who have always been liberal. When Zik was on his way back home from the United States, he ran into trouble in the Gold Coast. It was a team of lawyers led by the late H. O. Davies that saved him. This is a fact of history that should not be lost on the Igbo.”
Mr. Omosanya said he had expected that people intellectuals such as Achebe, would be bridge builders and avoid inflaming passions.