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What's New In W. Africa (Nigeria)

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What's New In W. Africa (Nigeria)

Old 26th Oct 2014, 23:02
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SAR: Night-ditching

Forget about the gutless helicopter companies taking a stand; how about pilots doing the right thing?

Target Zero congratulations bounced all over the Bristow-World earlier this month as "suits" couldn't stop trumpeting the fact that no one fell off a ladder in the NAF hangar causing an injury the past couple years!

We're the guys who will be treading water over-night, and probably blamed for any casualties.

Sadly, it will take just such a disaster for more calls from Houston and they won't be happy ones. (Leadership = Laugh Out Loud)
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Old 29th Oct 2014, 19:59
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Thumbs down Special Operations Battalion Deserts

As usual it looks as if 'news' of a Boko Haram ceasefire was just so much hot air and the kidnapped schoolgirls are still being held.
The news today is that an entire Nigerian army 'Special Operations' (= specially equipped to desert ) battalion brought in to launch an attack on the militants and retake towns in Adamawa State, had deserted after an attack on the town of Mubi by an 'insignificant' number of militants

The Nigerian Defence Headquarters has confirmed that an entire battalion of soldiers fled the town of Mubi in Adamawa State earlier today in response to an attack by “insignificant” Boko Haram militants, but that an investigation is going on to establish why.

SaharaReporters reported earlier in the day that the town had fallen to the militants.

A senior military source said there was no reason to believe that the Special Operation Battalion troops stationed in Mubi should have fled from the militants or in response to their threats because the army had decided to use the headquarters in Mubi to launch an attack to retake several towns from Boko Haram in the coming days. To that effect, five artillery tanks had been brought into Mubi in the last few days, the source said.

The officer disclosed that efforts are being made to send in fresh troops to replace the fleeing ones and push out any militants that might have entered Mubi.

As previously reported by SaharaReporters, residents and soldiers fled Mubi earlier today as information filtered in that Boko Haram militants had arrived and seized the town, gunshots rending the air.

Some of the soldiers who spoke to our reporter said their base had fallen to the militants but the senior officer said he could not confirm if the militants reached the base as the troops had all fled. The soldiers said air patrols were taking place around the area.

Efforts to reach military spokesman General Chris Olukolade to speak about the situation have so far proved abortive.
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Old 31st Oct 2014, 12:21
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Snoop The Heavy Hand of Akin

Despite Nigeria having been declared Ebola free by the WHO, Akin is continuing to impose EVD restrictions on staff, particularly on visitors to company accommodation and the status of the staff members, with a warning that flouting of this policy will lead to 'summary dismissal'. That's interesting, I thought that such things could only happen if this was in an employee's contract of employment . I sense the hand of a certain security contractor in this, who would like to see us all on total lockdown and disapproves of anybody having Nigerian friends .
Ebola is indeed a deadly disease, and preventing it needs to be taken seriously. However, malaria kills far more people and just giving people free prophylaxis is not doing enough. Every window needs a mosquito screen, all beds need mosquito nets and rooms and offices need regular spraying with insecticide. Typhoid and salmonella are also prevalent in Nigeria, but I'm not convinced that kitchens in all company accommodation are as clean as they should be - when you always give catering contracts to the lowest bidder whose standards are no better than those in Mumbai, you'll get what you pay for (and that's not just food ).
I also sense the heavy hand of Houston in all this as most of the denizens of the head shed are convinced that most of we Africans are barely civilised savages who live in mud huts and eat bush meat. Maybe they should look first at the state of their own country . It looks as if the reign of the diehard 'old colonialists' is well and truly back in Bristow Nigeria - the more things change, the more they stay the same
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Old 31st Oct 2014, 13:36
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...whose standards are no better than those in Mumbai
...the denizens of the head shed are convinced that most of we Africans are barely civilised savages...
Pot calling the kettle black?
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Old 31st Oct 2014, 16:08
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212 Man,

Have you ever been to Mumbai? I was very ill when I caught typhoid in the hotel in which I was staying there. Some people thought it was funny because they thought that a Nigerian should be immune to that sort of thing. Some years ago we had a pilot who had Legionnaire's disease caught from a Bristow residence.

A certain Scottish director, now resident in Houston seems to have it in for Nigeria. He hated us when he was here and now he's in a position of even more power and influence he's trying even harder to impose his will on us - probably because he's very frustrated that in his last job he was incapable of taming the other people he disliked who had the N-factor - the Norwegians Maybe that's because they have powerful unions whilst our unions in Nigeria are weak and corrupt
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Old 31st Oct 2014, 19:16
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Sadly Keke,

Your case is not helped by cases such as the one here where the courts have indicated they will seek the death penalty against a 14 year old GIRL accused of murdering her husband . How can any country allow a girl of 14 to marry?

Nigeria may seek death penalty against child bride

A 14-year-old Nigerian girl accused of murdering her 35-year-old husband by putting rat poison in his food could face the death penalty, Nigerian prosecutors said on Thursday.

The trial of Wasila Tasi'u, from a poor northern Nigeria family, has sparked a heated debate on the role of underage marriage in the conservative Muslim region, especially whether an adolescent girl can consent to be a bride.

Prosecutors at the High Court in Gezawa, outside Nigeria's second city of Kano, filed an amended complaint that charged Tasi'u with one count of murder over the killing of Umar Sani two weeks after their April wedding in the village of Unguwar Yansoro.

Lead prosecutor Lamido Abba Soron-Dinki said that if convicted, the charge is "punishable with death" and indicated the state would seek the maximum penalty.

Nigeria is not known to have executed a juvenile offender since 1997, when the country was ruled by military dictator Sani Abacha, according to Human Rights Watch.

Tasi'u entered the court wearing a cream-coloured hijab and was escorted by two policemen.

Her parents, who have condemned their daughter's alleged act, were in the public gallery, the first time the three were in the same room since Tasi'u's arrest in April, her legal representatives said.

The English-language charge sheet was translated into Hausa for the accused by the court clerk.

Tasi'u refused to answer when asked if she understood the charges.

Marital consent?

The case was adjourned for 30 minutes so the charges could be better explained to the defendant, but when the alleged offences were read again Tasi'u stayed silent, turned her head to the wall and broke down in tears.

"The court records [that] she pleads not guilty", Judge Mohammed Yahaya said, apparently regarding her silence as equal to a denial of the charges and adjourned the case until 26 November.

Activists, including in Nigeria's mainly Christian south, have called for Tasi'u's immediate release, saying she should be rehabilitated as a victim and noting the prospect that she was raped by the man she married.

But in the north, Islamic law operates alongside the secular criminal code, a hybrid system that has complicated the question of marital consent.

The affected families have denied that Tasi'u was forced into marriage, arguing that girls across the impoverished region marry at 14 and that Tasi'u and Sani followed the traditional system of courtship.

According to Nigeria's marriage act, anyone under 21 can marry provided they have parental consent and so evidence of an agreement between Tasi'u and her father Tasiu Mohammed could undermine claims of a forced union.

But defence lawyer Hussaina Aliyu has insisted the case is not a debate about the role of youth marriage in a Muslim society.

Instead, she has argued that under criminal law a 14-year-old cannot be charged with murder in a high court and has demanded that the case be moved to the juvenile system.

Nigeria defines the age of adulthood as 17 but the situation is less clear in the 12 northern states under Islamic law, where courts theoretically have the right to consider people under 17 as legally responsible.

Guidelines for how courts should blend Islamic and secular legal codes have not been well defined.

- AFP
Having said that, American courts hand out some ridiculously harsh sentences and sentenced 77 people to death in 2012 as against 56 in Nigeria, although according to Amnesty International statistics none of those sentences was actually carried out in Nigeria, whilst 43 were executed in USA (the fourth highest for any country after Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia).
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Old 24th Nov 2014, 08:03
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Election Madness is Ramping Up

President Jonathan seems to be almost totally ignoring the crisis in the Northeast of his country where 1.5 million people are estimated to have left their homes in the 18 months since emergency rule was declared. He's far too busy gathering the money and thugs he needs to support his campaign for re-election
Crisis Group Bodes Violent Elections in Nigeria Come 2015

NIGERIA is sliding dangerously towards violence before, during and after the February 2015 elections, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has warned.

In a major 48-page report titled Nigeria's Dangerous 2015 Elections: Limiting the Violence, published Friday, the Brussels-based global conflict think-tank observed that while Nigerian elections are traditionally fiercely contested, the risks of violence around next February's polls were particularly high.

According to the report, preparations for the elections are taking place in an increasingly volatile environment. It observed that while a two-party contest between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) is a sign of progress for the nation's democracy, the increasingly acrimonious relations between the two parties have already sparked numerous skirmishes among their supporters, and may turn bloodier once candidates start campaigning formally in December.

Apart from the inter-party tensions, the report noted that competing claims to the presidency between northern leaders and their Niger Delta counterparts, were also aggravating tensions around the elections.

It warned that: "As in 2011, clashes could erupt in some northern states if the APC, whose frontrunners are all northerners, loses the polls". It added that "there is similarly a high risk of violence if the PDP loses the presidency, particularly in the Niger Delta, home region of the party's candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan".

The report identified the Boko Haram insurgency and state of emergency in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states as also threatening the conduct of peaceful and credible elections.

It warned that if the presidential election is not held in the three states, it may "fall short of the constitutional requirements for electing a president, namely that the winner score 25 per cent of the votes in two-thirds of the 36 states, thereby raising serious legal disputes".

Other factors identified as compounding the risks of violence include the failure of the National Assembly to amend the Electoral Act, failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to produce a clean and credible voters register, and apparent bias by the police and other federally-controlled security services.

Commenting on the report, the Deputy Director of the International Crisis Group's Africa Programme, E. J. Hogendoorn, observed that: "As Africa's most populous country and largest economy, a Nigeria destabilised by election violence presents a very real security threat".

To Nnamdi Obasi, International Crisis Group's Senior Analyst for Nigeria, "with only three months to the polls, a sense of urgency is more than ever imperative, particularly on the part of the government, and the election management and security agencies".

The group therefore called on the nation's leaders to take several steps urgently, to limit the risks of widespread violence.
The state of emergency is widely seen as a complete failure which has led to more people than before being murdered and Boko Haram extending its territory


Nigeria's State of Emergency 'A Failure'


Northeastern Nigeria's emergency rule imposed 18 months ago has fallen under heavy criticism as Boko Haram continues to terrorize and kill civilians. Lawmakers have rejected the extension of the emergency measures.

The news that members of the lower house of parliament rejected the extension of the state of emergency was received with great relief by the residents of the three affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. Many of them think that the emergency rule imposed 18 months ago, in northeastern Nigeria has only worsened the situation rather than improving it.

"The state of emergency imposed in the northeastern states is of no advantage and of no significance," said Baba Abubakar, a resident of one of the northeastern states. "Some would say that the government is trying but those of us that are seeing the real picture of these things, have not seen anything the government is doing to curb the problem," said another resident Ahmad Aliyu.

Voting on a government request to extend the state of emergency on Thursday (20.11.2014), lawmakers rejected the move and described it as a total failure. Like many Nigerians, they believe that the state of emergency has damaged the security of the region rather than restored it. Speaking to DW, Hussaini Abdu, Director of Action Aid in Nigeria said that Boko Haram have killed more people, gained more ground and occupied more territories during the emergency rule than before.

Nigerian state of emergency could not prevent the abduction of more than 200 school girls

"Before the emergency, Boko Haram was operating mainly around Damaturu and Maiduguri... but since the emergency we have seen Boko Haram moving and occupying from 14 to 16 local governments in all the states," Abdu said. "Even the Chibok girls were abducted during the emergency rule," Abdu added.

A need for new strategies?

What many Nigerians fail to understand is why Boko Haram has managed to play hide and seek with the government's handsomely financed military force. Nigerian anti-terrorism act allows the government to deploy troops in any part of the country with the approval of the assembly. It also allows it to search and even detain people or groups perpetuating such actions. The government has however not been able to use the law in order to stop Boko Haram from terrorizing Nigerians.

Many experts believe that the extension of the emergency rule cannot curb the Boko Haram insurgency. Instead, the government has to make sure that the military has a clear understanding of the region, work more with local communities and equip the army properly. "They also need to invest in the military, boost the morale of the military officers. They need to increase those doctrinal issues around the military. Issues that will make the officer or soldier go to the battle willing to die for his country," Abdu added.

President Jonathan has been critized of not being able to attend security issues in his country

Lack of equipment has always been a challenge for the Nigerian military despite its heavy financial backing. Soldiers have often been ambushed by insurgents, giving the Islamists free reign to occupy more villages and establish what they are calling a caliphate. They have even deserted their posts and fled into neighboring countries.

Re-election is the priority

Although attacks by Boko Haram are reported in a daily basis, many Nigerians have the feeling that what currently occupies the minds of their leaders is the election rather than the insecurity. The country's President Goodluck Jonathan has left Nigeria on several occasions and is said to be mobilizing resources for next year's elections.

"People are killed or starve, the uncertainty is large - but the priority is still on the elections," Mairo Mahmud, a woman from Adamawa state which was under the emergency rule complained. "It is clear that for the politicians is all about power, not about people," she added.

On Wednesday suspected Boko Haram members were reported to have killed about 45 people in an attack on a village. The militants were seen entering the village in trucks. They destroyed houses and took food and some livestock with them. Last week, Boko Haram claimed to have captured Chibok town, home to more than 200 school girls who were abducted by the same group in April this year. The army recaptured the town a few days later.

Attacks by the militants have killed more than 5,000 people in a period of five years. More than 1.5 million people have fled their homes since Nigeria declared the emergency rule in the three states.
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Old 30th Nov 2014, 11:49
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Angry HOT Air

What a waste of word these past 2 posts! Same old hot air that's not really news to any of us still cracking-on in Nigeria?

How about 2 expat Chief Pilots dismissed by Bristow @ AGIP this past week, posted to Lagos making way for further inexperienced nationalization?

Caverton to the rescue of our Italian friends in April!

(Not much actual management over there now with retirement & resignation of the last two Base Managers)
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Old 1st Dec 2014, 01:03
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Thumbs up Never Let The Truth Get In The Way Of A Good Rumour

After all, this is a rumour network !

Cheers,

NEO
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Old 18th Dec 2014, 23:23
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Akin Oni out and Duncan Moore in as the WASBU MD. Is this the culmination of so many calls to the hotline reporting safety concerns?

Appointing a non-national will be controversial.
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Old 18th Dec 2014, 23:28
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Where is Oni off to this time?
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Old 18th Dec 2014, 23:53
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He'll be Duncan's 2IC until further notice. Make of that what you will!
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Old 19th Dec 2014, 11:29
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Given the rumours that AO had successfully secured himself a billet in Houston, I'll wait before I ..........
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Old 19th Dec 2014, 11:49
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Pretty good progress within the system....Bristow Cadet to Houston via the North Sea.

There was a time he would not have been welcome in the BRC.

Lots of changes came with American Ownership didn't it?
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Old 20th Dec 2014, 07:29
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Lots of changes came with American Ownership didn't it?
Yeah and not all for the better, too many chiefs these days and as always not enough Indians

Will have to see how well they ride out the upcoming storm brewing because of the low oil price. Probably using the "fire the Indians" part of the "hire & fire" American business model
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Old 20th Dec 2014, 08:53
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So if Duncan's taking overWASBU, who's taking over IBU?
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Old 20th Dec 2014, 11:28
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IBU is to be carved up between EBU, NABU, WASBU and AUSBU.

P1
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Old 20th Dec 2014, 11:46
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The Empire Building began before the Americans took over.

That they made mistakes...no debut but then it was not Utopia during the days of the Raj either.

So many of the current complaints were the same in the days pre-OLOG too.
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Old 28th Dec 2014, 13:50
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Good News

Well thats good news, my guess is that Houston had enough! There seems to be a de nationalizing cycle here that comes about every 6 years or so……

Wonder when the Scotsman will be sent in again to clean out the remainder of the Nigerian do nothing gang.
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Old 17th Jan 2015, 20:46
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Sorry

You all talk. If you had some guts, you would not have to file your misery here, stand up to beieng used. Even in Africa. Talk, no action, rumours only. What a bunch of .....
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