World Environment Day: Stakeholders ponder in Africa’s largest mega city

By Dotun Ibiwoye

Despite the 21 million  inhabitants in Lagos, Africa’s biggest mega city, the World Environment Day, WED, 2015 was celebrated last weekend and several possibilities on environmental sustainability was expected in the state.

Several Stakeholders converged and deliberated on how to protect the environment and sustain the ecosystem for the future generations at the celebration of WED organized Ecologistics Integrated Services Ltd at Oriental Hotel Victoria Island Lagos.

The Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA), disclosed that environmental degradation and pollution is not akin to the illiterates but the elites in the society are also culprits.

According to LASEPA’s General Manager, Mr Adebola Shabi, when there are heaps of refuse on th ground, it will affect the underground water. This is also an environmental element that reduces the quality of our natural water.

Shabi noted that everybody knows the law and knows that it is against the law to dumb refuse on the road in the river and the canal but the elites constantly engage in this act.

He also affirmed that Lagos is the cleanest state in Nigeria and Aba, in Abia State the dirtiest state is Nigeria.

“When the Lagos state government started the Private Sector Participation (PSP) in Solid Waste Management Practices in Lagos some years ago, several residents were against it. But today, Lagos is the cleanest state in Nigeria and Aba, in Abia State the dirtiest state is Nigeria.

We only achieved this through the PSP and proper management of our environment despite the huge population, he said

“You are not going to blame the government on everything that is causing a problem. Government is giving us bags and waste bins for free and most of us do not pay. When there are heaps of refuse, it will affect the underground water. This is also an environmental element that reduces the quality of our natural water.

“Everybody knows the law and we all know it is against the law to dumb refuse on the road in the river, canal etc but we all do it. Is that a fault of the government? Are we protecting or safeguarding the environment for the next generation but we are not doing enough. When wast collectors come to our area we don’t pay them. When it is raining we throw our refuse in the gutter. We constantly see rich people throw their gabbage on the street.

The LASEPA boss added: “So environmental degradation and pollution is not akin to the illiterates but the elites are also culprits. Lagos state government is spending billions of naira to dredge the canals. We need to give love to the environment. I want my great grandchildren to be in a better environment.

On social classification of people living in Lagos, the ageny’s helmsman said that the people living in suburbs and slums pay their bills and encourage the environmental protection agencies more than their counterpart in high brow areas in Lagos.

He also said that the rich people are destroying the environment with their carefree attitude.

“When we also started planting tree we were also accused of wasting government money. We have all seen the advantages it gives when we travel abroad. Planting of trees is means of reducing noise pollution and flooding.

According to the organizer of the event and President of Ecologistics Integrated Services Ltd, Dr. Paul Abolo the environment is speaking to us that we are abusing it.

“Everyone in the world is in a relation with the environment and a time will come when this relationship will breakdown. So everyone needs to make sure that this relationship continues”

Abolo said that sustainable consumption and production means using resources either to bring one satisfaction without necessarily using that resource in such a way that would cause problems to the user, other people or the environment; and using it in such a way that it is not going to be wasteful.

Report by :

Vanguard News

Tribunal strikes out Agbaje’s petition against Ambode, APC

The Lagos State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Ikeja on Wednesday struck out the petition filed by Mr Jimi Agbaje of PDP against Gov. Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State and All Progressives Congress (APC).

The three-member tribunal, chaired by Justice Muhammad Sirajo, upheld the submission of Ambode and APC that the petition was incompetent.

Sirajo said: “In the instant petition, apart from an order nullifying the election of the second respondent, the petitioners did not ask for an order of fresh election.

“Where such a prayer is lacking, the petition will be incompetent and academic as even the resolution of such a petition will be incompetent and academic.

“Even the resolution of such a petition in favour of the petitioner will not confer any utilitarian value on the petitioner.

“Where no relief for fresh election is claimed in a petition, a ground founded on Section 138(1)(b) of the Electoral Act and the entire petition itself are incompetent and liable to be struck out.

“So, if for instance, the election is nullified, the people of Lagos State would be left in an anarchic situation as no order can validly be made for the conduct of a fresh election, same having been sought for.

“A petition that is founded on disqualification of a respondent and an order of nullification of the election must, of necessity, contain a prayer for an order of fresh election. “it is for this reason that the grounds of the petition that survived up till this point can no longer be countenanced.

“In the circumstance, paragraph 13(b) and 19(8) of the petition and reliefs 19(5) and 19(8) are hereby struck out in view of the want of the reliefs seeking the conduct of fresh election.” Agbaje had petitioned the tribunal challenging the outcome of the April 11 governorship election in the state which Ambode won.

Agbaje alleged some irregularities in the election which breached the provisions of INEC guidelines for the polls.

The other respondents in the suit were INEC and Lagos State resident electoral commissioner.

Ambode’s counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), had argued that the petition should be struck out for being incompetent.

“There is no correlation between the reliefs being sought and the particulars on one hand and the grounds for questioning the election on the other hand. “The grounds and particulars in the petition are at opposites with the facts and reliefs being sought within the purview of Section 285(2) of the 1999 Constitution.

“I urge my lordships to dismiss the petition,” Olanipekun said.

He said the petitioners neither attacked the victory of the respondents nor question the conduct of the election and as such “there is no petition before your lordships known to law.’’

Counsel to Agbaje, Mr Clement Onwuenwunor, had maintained that the petition was competent and the issues for determination by the tribunal carefully spelt out. “Paragraph 13(a) and (b) of our petition questioned the election in Lagos State on the grounds of non-compliance with the Electoral Act and irregularities, such as in the use of the card readers.

“We have looked at their preliminary objections in this case and have concluded that they are objections made on mere technicalities,” he said.

Report By :

Vanguard News

El-Rufai inaugurates 16-man committee to end killings in Kaduna

Gov. Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna State on Wednesday inaugurated a 16-member committee to find solutions to the incessant killings in the Southern part of the state. The committee, headed by retired Gen. Martins Agwai, a former Chief of Defence Staff, had 30 days to unravel the causes of the attacks.

Statistics released by the National Emergency Management Agency showed that 23, 890 people were displaced by communal clashes in Kaura, Kachia and Sanga Local Government Areas of the state in 2014.

El-Rufai said that government was determined to end the circle of violence through dialogue.

“The circles of killing in Southern part of Kaduna have been a source of great concern to us. “We are concerned because communities that have lived together for hundreds of years have suddenly turned against each other.

“We know this problem can only be solved through community dialogue so as to get to the root of the problem and bring everyone to the table and hear their side,’’ the governor said. According to him, the setting up of the committee is part of the government’s multi-dimensional approach in finding lasting solutions to the problem.

“The idea behind the committee was started by the previous administration, but for some reasons the committee never took off. “When we came in and saw the idea, we thought it is a very good idea that can contribute in no small way in resolving the problems that had resulted to the killings in Southern Kaduna.’’

El-Rufai commended Agwai for agreeing to serve, and hoped that he would deploy his experience in crisis management at national and international levels, to end the conflict in the area.

He pledged that the administration would use the committee’s recommendations and that of the Peace and Reconciliation “to lay the foundation for sustainable peace, reconciliation and progress in the state’’.

Responding on behalf of the committee, Agwai pledged to deliver on the mandate given to them. “I promise that we would do our best and meet the 30 days deadline to come out with the report on the findings,’’ Agwai said.

Report By :

Vanguard News

After eight years in slavery, a bittersweet homecoming

(CNN)The ramshackle house is full of the symbols of time passing.

Clocks -- there are at least five of them, none of them telling the right time -- dot the walls. And calendars too, out of date and unmarked; no birthdays, events or memories written into them, just left blank.

This is the home of Manee Chanviset, 77, and Samarn Charoensuk, 78, a Thai couple, whose children left them behind long ago. One, their youngest, Maleenu Charoensuk -- nicknamed "Lek" -- had been missing, feared dead, for years. Now they sit in their home, alone.

When their children left, times got hard. The parents were reduced to picking through garbage, scavenging to find things that they could sell, so they could eat.

Theirs would have been an untold misery, but for the Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN), an NGO which found Lek, improbably, stranded on an Indonesian island. They took down information about his family and his hometown, and tracked down his parents.

They spoke for the first time in almost eight years, a call arranged by LPN, ears pressed against a borrowed mobile phone.

When we arrived at their home it's time to join them as they pick up their son from the airport. They don't have the money to go themselves so another NGO, Stella Maris Seafarer, is taking them. As we walk in, the organization has also brought the couple some provisions, the result of donations.

It's an extraordinary turn of events for the elderly couple.

Long-overdue reunion

She doesn't have much, but Lek's mother, Manee, buttons up her best, blue silk shirt. It hangs from her thin figure, but she looks so happy -- and nervous.

She called Lek's estranged sister for moral support as soon as they heard the government was bringing him back to Thailand, and she is part of the welcoming committee -- an ever-increasing number of family and relatives who have returned to witness his homecoming.

But his father won't go to the airport. He says he is not well and too weak, but it seems he is overwhelmed. He breaks down as we set off for the airport, his head in his hands. Tears of joy -- and perhaps disbelief -- that their son is finally coming home.

Manee has never even been to the airport before, but this trip is one she's longed for for years. The entire journey she speaks quietly, in a daze.

"I never thought this day would come," she says. "My heart is pounding. All I want is to see his face. All I want is to see his face"

Reunited

When they spot him they cry, and she clings to him, her tiny frame trying to hold him in this moment for as long as she can.

"Let's go home... let's go home," she whispers. "Don't you go anywhere again." She takes a good look at him. He is much thinner, and he looks so much older.

Lek is in shock at first. He can barely speak but tells his mother, the woman he hasn't seen for eight years, that he didn't think he would ever make it back home.

He had disappeared without a trace, without warning. His parents assumed he'd taken a fishing job, like he'd done once before.

It's not difficult at all to see why poor young men risk their lives at sea, to try and earn some money to alleviate their extreme poverty.

His family's home is a rusty shack of carefully choreographed corrugated iron -- his parents must have built it years ago, before their strength left them.

Tricked, kidnapped

He tells us how he was tricked onto a boat, at the very beginning of his eight-year ordeal.

"I was drunk and they took me to the boat," he recalls. "I told them I wanted to leave but they didn't let me. They hit me and forced me to board. There were so many men."

They told him he could go for a three-month trial and that he was free to leave if he didn't like it. He didn't know then that he wouldn't see his home for almost a decade.

He says he was on the boat for about seven months before it landed at a port in Indonesia.

"Some of us got off to buy some drinks for fellow workers. The captain was so angry he beat us and stabbed me. He abandoned me on an Indonesian island. "

"There, I was stuck on land carrying rocks in exchange for food," he says, eyes downcast.

Rescue

He was discovered by LPN only when Indonesian authorities began a clampdown on illegal fishing boats in their waters. Thousands of men from countries across Southeast Asia poured off the boats, telling tales of being trapped at sea. Others were already on islands like Lek's, abandoned with no paperwork.

Now he's home, he won't go back, he says. And his parents won't let him. They cling to him.

But Lek -- and hundreds of others like him -- is returning home to the same poverty and lack of prospects as they suffered before.

They may have just returned but have a long journey ahead; the struggle to settle back in and to find work to feed their families -- in the same conditions that led them, years ago, to being trafficked and forced to work as slaves.

How to help: Global hotlines to report suspected cases of human trafficking

CNN's Kocha Olarn contributed to this report.

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As death toll rises to 135, Indonesia crash raises concerns over aging fleet

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN)The crash of a 50-year-old Indonesian Air Force plane that killed at least 135 people has put the health of the Southeast Asian nation's military aircraft under scrutiny.

The C-130 Hercules transport plane slammed into a neighborhood of Medan, a major city on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, shortly after takeoff Tuesday, leaving a hellish scene of smoldering wreckage and shattered buildings.

The plane wasn't only carrying military personnel but also their family members, as well as students and other civilians.

"Aging fleet again takes its toll," read a headline on the website of the Jakarta Post, a local English-language newspaper.

Other local media reminded Indonesians that this isn't the first disaster involving one of the Indonesian Air Force's decades-old C-130s. In May 2009, one crashed near the city of Madiun on the island of Java, killing scores of people.

Tuesday's crash is the sixth involving an Indonesian Air Force plane in the past decade, according to the Aviation Safety Network, an agency that keeps a database of aircraft accidents worldwide.

President wants review of aircraft after series of crashes
Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for a review of military equipment in light of the series of disasters.

"Following several plane crashes, we should conduct a total audit and modernize the (old) planes," Jokowi said Tuesday, according to Indonesia's national news agency, Antara.

Authorities are still investigating what caused the disaster. Air Marshal Agus Supriatna, the commander of the Indonesian Air Force, said Wednesday that officials suspect engine trouble might have been to blame.

Lockheed has been making the C-130 Hercules, a four-engine turboprop plane known for its durability, since the 1950s.

Families face uncertain wait for answers
The aircraft that crashed Tuesday was built in the United States in the 1964, according to the Indonesian military.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the plane was due to be retrofitted soon, local media reported.

It had been inspected and cleared to fly before it took off from Medan, said Maj. Gen. Fuad Basya, an Indonesian military spokesman.

Complicating investigators' efforts to find out what went wrong on the C-130, the military said the aircraft wasn't believed to have a flight data recorder on board.

Families may face an indefinite wait for clear answers. The military says it still hasn't made public its conclusions on what caused the C-130 crash back in 2009.

Body bags pile up at hospital
At the local hospital in Medan on Wednesday, body bags piled up in corridors as officials worked on the grim process of identifying remains.

Police told CNN Indonesia that the process was been hampered by the lack of a cold room in the hospital where the identification team could carry out the task.

Zulkifli, an Indonesian Red Cross official who goes by only one name, said that 135 bodies had been brought from the crash site, along with seven bags containing body parts.

Images from the scene of the disaster showed heavy lifting equipment digging through the debris.

Plane was ferrying people, supplies between islands
The plane was carrying people and logistical supplies bound for bases on other Indonesian islands.

It began its multistop journey Tuesday in Jakarta, the capital, and had made two stops along the way to Medan, in Pekanbaru and Dumai. Sometimes, Indonesian civilians also hitch rides on military flights to get to islands which might otherwise be inaccessible.

The military has set up command posts in Jakarta and Medan to help the victims' families, Supriatna said.

Antara reported that the plane hit a busy road that connects Medan with the highland tourist resort of Brastagi.

CNN's David Molko reported from Jakarta, and CNN's Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong. CNN's Kathy Quiano and journalist Tasha Tampubolon contributed to this report.

Another fire outbreak!

Another fire outbreak!

Another fire outbreak at iyana ipaja round about, Lagos yesterday Tuesday, 30th of June 2015, opposite Ecobank.

According an eye witness Olumide Fabamise (a.k.a Olufab) that was spoken with, he said people just saw smoke flying in the air around around after 3pm, everyone far away started running to the point of smoke thinking it's another tanker burning.

He continued that to his surprise, no any attempt by the crowd to put off the fire just because it PSP truck that is burning. But people stood there to make sure it doesn't affect life or properties.