PROTEST !

Inusah Fuseini, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources

By Christian Kpesese

Rocks and Rivers Mining Ltd, a local mining company has asked the President to stop the Minster for Lands and Natural Resources from revoking its license.

In a petition to the President, Nana Kwabena Kwarteng, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Company insisted that the allegations against his company are unfounded.

The Ministry claims that RMM entered into an agreement with a Chinese firm, Black Sands Mining Ltd which permitted the later to carry out illegal mining activities on its concession.

According to the Mnistry, investigations conducted by the Minerals Commission on RMM`s concession in November, 2012 revealed large mechanically dug pits, excavators, Chinese fabricated sluice-boxes and a camp for illegal mining.

Nana Kwarteng denies this and has appealed to the President to save his company from the continuous harassment of the Minerals Commission.

The retired Army captain has also accused officials of the Minerals Commission of illegally selling their mining concessions of 20 acres to the Chinese for Three $ 300, 000.

The sale of the property to the Chinese he alleged was the cause of the recent flooding of Ghana by the Chinese nationals into the illegal Galamsey mining business.

According to the petition which was addressed to the President, Nana Kwarteng and his partners have spent all their savings to develop the concessions for full-scale mining only for the Minerals Commission to reclaim them and subsequently sell them at high prices to foreign nationals.

 The humiliating treatment against them by the Commission he claimed has caused the death of four of his colleagues from stroke, a disease he and one Major Forson are still battling with.

He explained that they became stranded with no money after spending all their pension benefits on the concession to no avail.

The 71 year old retired  army Captain appealed to the President to act promptly and also advice his Ministers to learn to listen to both feuding factions before taking unilateral decisions on serious issues such as his.

Editorial

Welcome!

The problem with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is not the decision of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo to run for President.

It is how the party manages its democratic processes leading up to the election of its presidential candidates.

Nana Akufo Addo like every member of the party who is above 40 years and is  of  a sound mind has the right to dream about motorcades and presidential salutes and this cannot be a problem.

 However when officers of the party proclaim publicly that they are loyal to Nana Akufo- Addo alone there is a huge problem.

 How can these officers be expected to conduct and supervise free and fair elections in the NPP?

Why should other presidential aspirants co-operate with leaders of the party who are openly working against them?

 Nana has now publicly declared his intention to join the race for President and we can only say, Masa, welcome aboard.

COLLINS ARHIN RIDES HIGH

By Christian Kpesese

This is not exactly a story of from rags to riches but it stills shows that for those who try to be honest, transformation is possible.

Mr Collins Arhin who could not pay his rent of GHC 800.00 only a week ago is now the proud owner of a prime land donated by a real estate development Firm, Real Plan Estates.

He also has more than GHC 7000.00 in his back pocket and could very soon start the building of his own house.

His landlord has also asked him not to pay his rent.

Collins who for the has been unemployed for one year unemployed now has seven jobs offers at his table.

His friends who laughed at him for his ``foolishness’’ are now back in the fold and are very proud of him.

For Collins, he did only what was right and expressed shock at the level of respect and reward he is getting from the public for his honesty.

He said he felt very happy and humbled by the outpour of goodwill messages and support and gives thanks to God.

His only wish is that, everybody will try to do good at all times to make society a fair place to live by all irrespective of their social status.

Mr Collins was on his way to take a loan of GHC 800.00 to pay for his rent when he found a bag containing GHC 2,400.00.

He went to Peace Fm to make an announcement and eventually handed over the money to its real owner.

Since then he has received gifts and praise for his honesty.

NPP RACE

10 More Presidential Hopefuls To Declare

Alan Kojo Kyeremanteng, will he contest?

By Ekow Mensah

Nana Akufo Addo is only one of many qualified members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) who want to be the party’s presidential candidate for the 2016 elections.

Even though Nana appears popular, his declaration of his intention to run for president last Thursday, will not prevent at least 10 more aspirants from making their own declarations

It is expected that Mr Alan Kyeremateng, former Minister of Trade will throw his hat into the ring sooner than later.

 Mr. Kyeremateng an affable gentleman, like Nana Akufo- Addo has a track record of commitment to the NPP.

Professor Frimpong Boateng, a highly respected surgeon has also indicated that he would run for President on the ticket of the NPP.

 He announced his intention on TV3’s current affairs programme “Hot Issues”.

 According to him, Ghana needs a new kind of leader.

 Mr. Kofi Konadu Appreku, former Minister of Trade and Regional Integration is also on record to have expressed a serious interest in the presidential candidature of the party.

 At least two sitting members of parliament are also rumored to be polishing their act in preparation for declaring their intention to run for President.

 Papa Owusu Ankowah and Mr. Joe Ghartey both former Attorney-Generals are also keenly interested in the race.

 Mr. Osei Ameyaw, a lawyer and Member of Parliament is also in the reckoning.

 Party sources say they expect at least 10 aspirants to announce their interest in the race for the presidential candidature of the NPP.

Looking For Jobs, Finding Death

By Femi Fani-Kayode

Whether anyone likes to accept it or not the bitter truth is that 80 per cent of our GRADUATES are unemployed in Nigeria today whilst 51 per cent of our PEOPLE are also unemployed. As a frightful and grave consequence of these shocking statistics, which I happen to believe may well be a world record in terms of unemployment, a terrible tragedy occured in various cities in our country on 15th March, 2014.

On that day approximately 520,000 of our youths gathered together in sports stadiums in various cities all over our country for an aptitude test for just 4,556 jobs that were available in the Immigration Service. These staggering numbers were given out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs itself. 68,000 of those youths gathered at Abuja's National Stadium alone and sadly 10 of them were were crushed to death in a stampede whilst looking for those jobs whilst many others were injured. It did not stop there. Another 20,000 youths gathered in the stadium at Port Harcourt, Rivers state for aptitude tests for the same 4,556 jobs and there was another stampede there as well in which 4 of their colleagues were killed and four more were so badly wounded that they remain in a coma up until now. 

Similar gatherings for the same Immigration aptitude test took place in cities all over the country all for a shot at the same 4,556 jobs and three young pregnant girls together with three male youths were killed in a similar stampede at the stadium in Minna, Niger state. The deaths of youths were also reported in stadiums in some of our other cities as well including Benin and Kano.

The only crime that all these children that were either killed, maimed or injured in these horrific stampedes in the stadiums of all these cities like Abuja, Port Harcourt, Minna, Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Benin and elsewhere had committed was to try to get a job, to fight for a better life for themselves and to try to secure their future. What a tragedy.
One day Nigerians will appreciate the importance of facts, figures and statistics and the consequences of tolerating atrocious, lousy, insensitive and unaccountable governments. They will also understand the implications of having a government that has no qualms about taking advantage of the pitiful plight of it's own youths and citizens and scamming them in the most obvious and shameful manner. 

Why should anyone be surprised that 520,000 of our youths gathered in stadiums all over the country on the 15th March 2014 just to apply for a relatively tiny handful of jobs that are available in the Immigration Service? This is so SIMPLY because there are NO jobs available for these children in our country. 

I repeat 80 per cent of our GRADUATES are unemployed and 51 per cent of our PEOPLE are unemployed. Sadly these figures have been confirmed by various international organisations even though the Nigerian Federal Government often seeks to deny them. Given this deplorable state of affairs why won't our youths die and be killed or injured whilst looking for the few jobs that are available? Why won't they gather in stadiums all over the country in their hundreds of thousands just to do an aptitude test for a job in Immigration for which there are only 4,556 vacancies? Why should anyone be surprised by this madness and this turmoil? Why should anyone be moved by this horrific carnage when it is now a regular phenomenon in our country for children to be slaughtered. If they are not butchered whilst at school by islamist fundamentalists they are slaughtered whilst they are looking for jobs from a heartless government which has effectively destroyed their future.

Yet look for jobs they must because these children and these youths are desperate and they are suffering. To make matters worse they are also being taken advantage of and scammed by their own government who are desperate to extort money from them by all means available. If this were not the case why would the Comptroller-General of Immigration and the Minister of Internal Affairs order that each and every one of those youths that flooded the stadiums in their hundreds of thousands and that stood in the sun should be made to pay 1000 naira each for the forms that they were to use to do the aptitude test at the various stadiums all over the country. 

Someone was set to make a whole lot of money considering the fact that 520,000 youths were involved in this shameless exercise and the amount of cash that they must have made runs into at least 2 billion naira. The whole thing was just a massive and monuemental scam to extort billions of naira from these poor, young and innocent souls and many of our youths have paid for it with their lives.

This is what President Goodluck Jonathan's Nigeria has done to them. We now have an army of angry, jobless, frustrated, disillusioned and desperate youths on our hands in this country and consequently we are literally sitting on a keg of gunpowder. May God help us and may He forgive us for failing these children and destroying their futures.
Other than this I will say no more on this matter because the truth is that most Nigerians no longer ''give a damn'' when blood is shed and when lives are taken. This is so even when those lives are those of children. Permit me to give an example. On the very same day that our youths were dying in stadiums looking for jobs with Immigration another 100 innocent people were being slaughtered by ''unknown gunmen'' in southern Kaduna and no-one seems to care. Again only two days before then, on March 13th 2014, 110 innocent Nigerians were butchered by what were described in the press as a group of ''fulani gunmen who were on motorbikes'' in Katsina state whilst the President was on an official visit there. What a tragedy. 

Under President Goodluck Jonathan we have become a nation of vampires where the death of innocent children and youths means nothing and where we cannot even provide jobs or a decent standard of living for our young ones. Instead we attempt to scam them and to extort money from them. What a government, what a country.
If our government had any sense of decency, justice or accountabilty the Comptroller-General of Immigration and the Minister of Internal Affairs would have not only been compelled to resign or fired by now but they would also have been arrested and would be facing criminal charges for, at the very best, criminal negligence and manslaughter and, at the very worse, accessories before the fact to murder. Yet we know that that will never happen as long as President Goodluck Jonathan is in power.  Far from it.

As a matter of fact instead of bowing his head in shame and showing any sense of contrition or remorse the Minister of Internal Affairs has come out shamelessly and blamed the dead youths themselves by saying that ''they did not exercise enough patience during the exercise''. May God forgive this man. I wonder if he would have expressed such sentiments if any of his own children had been killed in the stampede. 

Permit me to end this contribution by qouting from a moving email that I received from a dear Nigerian family friend who herself is a mother and who presently resides in the United Kingdom with her family. She sent it to me the day after the tragic death of the youths in the stadium. I have obtained her permission to share her words in this write-up but for obvious reasons I will not mention her name. She wrote-  

''Good morning uncle Femi. I honestly don't know where to start from. My heart is so heavy. What is it about Nigeria that (or is it we as a nation) nothing  good comes out of the news. I'm beginning to wonder if there is nothing wrong with me when I go through websites expectant of only bad news. Why don't I ever expect anything good to come out if Nigeria? I don't even know what to tell my children again. I try to give them a balanced view of the country but something would always come up to make nonsense of that. Why would any sane person want to come and live in that madness called Nigeria where nothing is guaranteed. Life is not guaranteed, jobs are not guaranteed, education is not guaranteed, security is not guaranteed, a decent daily meal is not guaranteed. I could go on and on. I came to a realization recently which is self-preservation. Abi shebi it's life/self first. When I saw the early morning pictures of the crowd of youths at the Abuja stadium my heart just sank because I could almost write the script of what would follow. And so I waited (expectantly?)and wasn't disappointed. Would anything come out of it? No. Would life go on? Yes. Do they care? No. And the moron of a Minister had the gall to say that candidates died because of ''impatience''.

Meanwhile the so-called aptitude test was just a ruse. They had handpicked their preferred candidates weeks ago. The crowd alone told me that we have a serious problem of youth unemployment yet Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala would come out and be reeling stupid figures. Please tell her that she's not fooling anyone. As if the unemployment is not bad enough government is opening more universities like daycare centers and still granting licenses for private universities. Who is going to absorb these teeming unemployed graduates? Where are the industries? Are you creating an enabling environment for investment? Infact I'm just done with agonizing over Nigeria. Self first please!''

Her words and counsel moved me to tears. As far as I am concerned she captured the mood very well and her simple yet succinct submission is reflective of the thinking and deep pain of millions of Nigerians from all over the world that are fast losing hope in their nation. Yet what can we do but just continue to hope and pray. What can we do for the future of our children and to better the fortunes of our nation? This is indeed food for thought. As the bible says, ''may God deliver us from bloodthirsty and evil men'' and ''may the balm of Gilead heal our wounds and comfort our mourning souls''. 

Praying and fasting won’t solve Ghana’s problems!

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Folks, once again, we are being given to know how the Church and State are positioning themselves to influence the national psyche and approach to governance. In this 21st century, some in authority think that solutions to our existential problems can be sought as manna to drop from who-knows-where?

If you doubt it, read the news report:

A “National Week of Fasting, Prayer and Thanksgiving” begins this year. It will be organized by the Christian community, in collaboration with the government. A meeting to discuss the maiden programme took place at the Banquet Hall of the Flagstaff House on Monday when President Mahama hosted the senior clergy to a breakfast meeting.

The meeting elected the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rt. Rev. Dr. K. Opuni-Frimpong, to be the lead person in the organisation of the prayer week.

(Credit: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=303642)

MY COMMENTS

I like it that President Mahama did point out that as much as prayers are important in helping to shape society and the nation, that effort alone cannot achieve the development needed.

His call for hard work from the people and advice that all should take advantage of the opportunities that exist in the country are apt. But there is a lot more to worry about.

When leaders of a country turn to prayer and fasting as the instrument for shaping human behaviour, they confirm impressions that there is a lot more happening than meet the eyes. Prayer and fasting have serious religious (health and moral) benefits and cannot be discounted just because they are being factored into the strategies for governance.

But I am really concerned at this turn to “spirituality”, probably because some people are insistent on creating the impression that God is willing to come down from the heavens to help Ghana solve the existential problems reducing its citizens further down the poverty line.

And some may even question the scope of this prayer-and-fasting agenda, particularly as is being spearheaded by only one segment of what constitutes the religious community in this secular state called Ghana.

Christians!! 

Where do adherents of the other known religious sects come in? Take the huge Muslim community and followers of traditional African religion(s) in the country, for instance, and you will see that the move being made is already skewed to privilege the Christian God; but we know that this Christian God isn’t any different the Muslim Allah or the traditional African Mawu (for the Ewes), Nyonmor (for the Gas), Nyame or its variants (for the Akans), or any other name that members of the over 100 ethnic groups in Ghana have for the Supreme Deity.

Are these members of the Christian community being empowered to pray and fast on behalf of these excluded segments of the society?

You see, right from scratch, the agenda is skewed and will create needless conflict. I am more than convinced that what is being initiated is only designed to serve the interests of those Christian leaders now snuggling so close to the Presidency as to begin making weird claims of superiority.

In all that is happening and will unfold fully later on, there is little indication that the real change that is needed to move Ghana forward will happen. Nation-building demands requisite policies and programmes and a well-focused government to implement them with the backing of a conscientious citizenry.

In Ghana’s case, these ingredients are missing, which is why nothing is happening to change the deplorable situation in the country despite the over-abundant natural and human resources.

I really find a lot wrong with this flight into spirituality and religiosity. We recognize the prevalence of all manner of churches and religious institutions in Ghana—and they proliferate daily too—without any corresponding drastic change in the mindset, lifestyle, and attitude of the adherents. In other words, the more these churches and-what-not spring up, the higher the negative activities impeding national development go.

In effect, then, what is the value of all these efforts steeped in religiosity? I hold a strong opinion that developing Ghana can be done without any recourse to such cosmetic measures as weekly prayer-and-fasting sessions.

It is up to the government to know why it is in office and the citizens to do what they have to do. No amount of howling at such stage-managed sessions will change anything. Indeed, the man-hours to be lost on such an occasion must itself be taken note of.

Of course, the problems that we all are complaining about (bribery and corruption, immorality, incompetence, greed, nepotism, hypocrisy, etc.) as impeding Ghana’s development exist in the Church too. Indeed, the Church is a microcosm of the macrocosm that the state is.

Where is the guarantee, then, that using the medium of the Church can help us in any way to solve the problems that are mostly self-created? Ghana could have been developed had its leaders been committed enough to enunciate and implement workable policies to galvanize the citizens to action.

What we have seen in this 4th Republic, particularly, is heart-rending. If the President and all high-ranking public officials are exempted from paying tax (and the church leaders don’t do so either), isn’t the line crooked already? 

I may be going too far in criticizing this prayer-fasting-thanksgiving initiative; but knowing very well how ex-President Mills did things within the context of a national day of prayers (that his critics ridiculed), I am wary that President Mahama is allowing himself to be drawn into this kind of laughable game of wits. Tweaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa to our so-called leaders and “Duee” to Mother Ghana!!

I shall return…

E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com

Join me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to continue the conversation.

Nigeria falls into a state of war

Boko Haram militants

By David Smith and Gillian Parker in Abuja

More than 1,300 people have died in the past two months as an insurgent Islamist group, Boko Haram, wages a rebellion rooted in poverty, corruption, religion and geography

Zakari Matazu had just got home when a deafening sound filled his ears and part of his wall cracked and fell to the floor, whipping up a cloud of dust. Then came another boom and his legs started shaking.

"I walked outside my house, then I saw people running helter-skelter and people screaming, and at that point my legs could no longer carry me, so I just sat down on the ground," he recalled. "That is when I saw my neighbour Mama Baby, who was screaming and pointing to a building that had been brought to the ground by the bomb, and she was saying that her children were in the rubble."

Matazu, 29, survived the double bomb blast earlier this month in Maiduguri, north-east Nigeria, that killed about 45 people and destroyed seven buildings. It was the latest blow by the terrorist group Boko Haram to shake the foundations of Africa's most populous state.

Boko Haram is believed to be responsible for killing at least 1,300 people in the past two months and more than 130 people in the past week. The radical sect claims ties to al-Qaida and has ambitions to impose sharia law on Nigeria's 170 million people. In Boko Haram's heartland, even the national military is outgunned in what is fast becoming a lesson to the world in how not to tackle an Islamist insurgency.

"What is clear is that they are as ruthless as any Islamist group or terrorists anywhere in the world," said Antony Goldman, a west Africa risk analyst at London-based PM Consulting. "They're quite happy to hit soft targets, including schools. Some in the Nigerian administration expect this to be a problem for another 10 years."

In some ways, the paradox of Nigeria in 2014 captures that of Africa itself. The continent has enjoyed a decade of economic growth and the phrase "Africa rising" has become widespread among investors and journalists. Yet at the same time the past six months have seen conflicts erupt in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, while economic growth has gone hand in hand with deepening inequality.

So it is with Nigeria which, with oil wealth and a decade of annual growth around 7%, is set to overtake South Africa as Africa's biggest economy, with a value close to $400bn. It has been anointed one of the "Mint" emerging economies – along with Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey – by economist Jim O'Neill. Nigerians drink more champagne than Russians do.

But just as Africa cannot shake old habits of instability, so the booming commercial capital, Lagos, is only part of the story in one of the continent's most unequal societies. In the north of the country, 72% of people live in poverty, compared with 27% in the south and 35% in the Niger delta, according to the US Council on Foreign Relations.

Goldman added: "It's a very big and very diverse country which has a particular source of wealth that has benefited some areas more than others. The north has been left behind and is probably more impoverished now than at any time in the last 30 to 40 years."

For centuries, the region enjoyed the fruits of Islamic civilisation. Then in the early 19th century its sultanates succumbed to a jihad by Shehu Usuman Dan Fodio, who created a unified caliphate that was the biggest pre-colonial state in Africa, ruling swaths of what is now northern Nigeria, Niger and southern Cameroon. It had a strict interpretation of Islam and a culture of scholarship and poetry. The current jihad is an example of religious rebellion in northern Nigeria that is still manifest, according to the anthropologist Murray Last. "My argument is that today's dissidents, such as the notorious Boko Haram, are part of a tradition of dissidence; and that neither are they a new phenomenon nor will they be the last of their kind," he wrote last year.

Northern Nigeria did not escape the expansion of the British empire into Africa and was conquered in 1903. Since then, there has been resistance to western education, with many Muslim families refusing to send their children to government-run "western schools".

Shehu Sani, a human rights activist and author of Boko Haram: History, Ideas And Revolt, said: "The north fought the British colonisers because they thought they were bringing in western ideas and this would erode Islamic values and erode their culture. The southern part of Nigeria was relatively more receptive. We can say Boko Haram has historical roots in resistance to the west, but it is not a justification for wanton killings. They are condemned by the vast majority of Muslims."

The north-east remained a centre of Islamic learning for children from all over Nigeria and west Africa, Sani said. Its madrasas did not necessarily encourage extremism but did shape the founders of Boko Haram, who embraced the Qur'anic phrase: "Anyone who is not governed by what Allah has revealed is among the transgressors."

Some believe the trigger for the group's inception was a gubernatorial election campaign in Borno state, when an opposition candidate organised a militia known as Ecomog, after the east African intervention force deployed in Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s. Following the election, the candidate disbanded Ecomog but did nothing to look after its members.

One of the militia's leaders, Mohammed Yusuf, was able to exploit the frustration and disappointment and blend it with an Islamist agenda that rejected the failings of secular government to form Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad.

In the north-eastern city of Maiduguri, where the sect had its headquarters, it was dubbed Boko Haram.

 Loosely translated from the Hausa language, this means "western education is forbidden". Poverty, joblessness and despair at feeble and corrupt central governance made for fertile territory among disenchanted young men. Even climate change played a part: the drying of Lake Chad meant that fishing families were displaced and had to search for alternative livelihoods, not always successfully.

Chris Ngwodo, a Nigerian political analyst, told al-Jazeera: "The group's appeal is religious and resonates in the context of a weak state with severely weakened institutions. Its theatre of operations – the Sahel – features a perfect storm of sovereignty: deficient states, a young, economically frustrated population mired in poverty, nations with long histories of strife and the collapse of agrarian economies due to climate change.

"Boko Haram represents an alternative order to this matrix of dysfunction. It evidently aims to be to the Sahel what the Taliban was in Afghanistan and in Pakistan's tribal areas."

Like so many self-appointed rebels and revolutionaries, Yusuf was not poor. He was said to be well-educated and to drive a Mercedes. In an interview with the BBC, he set out the group's anti-science philosophy: "Prominent Islamic preachers have seen and understood that the present western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam. Like rain. We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain. Like saying the world is a sphere. If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We reject the theory of Darwinism."

Yusuf set up a religious complex, which included a mosque and an Islamic school that attracted many poor Muslim families. In 2009 Boko Haram attacked several police stations and other official buildings in Maiduguri. The Nigerian security forces hit back and more than 1,000 people died, not all of them Boko Haram supporters. Yusuf was captured and killed, his body shown on television. Boko Haram was finished.

But its fighters regrouped under a new leader. In 2010 it attacked a prison in Bauchi state, freeing hundreds of its supporters, and carried out deadly bombings in Jos and military barracks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Its main modus operandi was to deploy gunmen on motorbikes to kill police, politicians and other opponents. Since then, the waves of shootings and bombings have continued and, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, Boko Haram is responsible for nearly 3,800 deaths since May 2011. The group has sworn allegiance to al-Qaida and, Sani says, some of its members have fought in Somalia and Sudan, but a formal link "cannot be independently confirmed".

Last year the president, Goodluck Jonathan, declared a state of emergency in three north-eastern states, but critics say the official response has been counterproductive, with extrajudicial killings and the torture of suspected Boko Haram members acting as a recruiting sergeant for the group.

Professor Ishaq Akintola, director of Muslim Rights Concern, said: "Life is very hard there. It is difficult to move freely from one place to the other. With military checkpoints all over the place and the fear of Boko Haram attacking them any moment, people are between the devil and the deep blue sea. Sometimes they are holed up indoors for days. Hunger and starvation have enveloped the environment. While thousands have fled their homes, it is only the fear of the unknown that has stopped the rest from fleeing."

If anything, Boko Haram has intensified its operations of late, including an attack that saw 43 students shot and hacked to death and many girls kidnapped. In response, the government closed five schools considered to be in "high security risk areas".

Some Nigerians who feel let down by the government are taking the fight on themselves. Zakari Matazu, survivor of the double bombing in Maiduguri, belongs to a youth vigilante group in Borno state popularly known as the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF). "Now Boko Haram are attacking everywhere because they are strong – even stronger than the soldiers," he said. "I am a CJTF but I now know that Boko Haram can decide to attack and capture the town of Maiduguri any time. Everybody knows that. The federal government has abandoned us to be killed by Boko Haram. All the people in the villages have fled to Maiduguri, so if Boko Haram does not see people killed in the villages, they will come to the city."

Last month Boko Haram threatened to strike farther afield, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the economy. Its leader, Abubakar Shekau, threatened attacks on oil refineries in the mainly Christian south, saying in a video: "Niger delta, you are in trouble." but few analysts believe the group poses an existential threat to Nigeria.

Goldman said: "People talk a lot of nonsense about Boko Haram. They say it's about Muslim versus Christian, north versus south. That's not true. Thousands have been killed and almost all of them have been Muslims in the north-east. That's where the brunt of this insurgency has been felt."

Several government crackdowns have failed to quell it and it seems 2014 could be the bloodiest year yet. Sani believes that only a combination of short- and long-term approaches can work. "The government of Nigeria can apply the stick – they must step up intelligence and military action – but there should also be the carrot approach if they can use Islamic clerics in the north and the Boko Haram members in detention. If there is a synergy of this, there could be a breakthrough. The long-term solution has to do with addressing poverty and inequality. There needs to be a new economic model for the Sahel."

Those on the frontline are living in a parallel universe to the champagne parties in Nigeria's big cities. "We are in a state of war," Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno state, said recently in a plea to the president. "Boko Haram are better armed and better motivated than our own troops. It is impossible for us to defeat the Boko Haram."

Where is the Malaysian aircraft?

By Lyuba Lyul'ko

The mysterious disappearance of Malaysian "Boeing 777" Flight MH370 has been dominating the world news for a week. Currently 26 countries are involved in the search of the liner, but so far to no avail. Various theories have been suggested, from realistic (hijacking or an accident) to mystical (UFO abduction). The main theory is hijacking. Pravda.Ru asked experts to comment on the situation.

Malaysia Airlines plane has disappeared from the radar on March 7th, with 239 passengers on board. The passengers are mostly Chinese citizens, but there was one Russian citizen on board. The airliner was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and communication has stopped halfway over the South China Sea.

42 ships and 35 aircraft from different countries are looking for the missing plane, and aircraft and ships from Malaysia, China, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and the United States are actively involved. Data from radar stations and military radars of Pakistan, Indonesia, India, and Thailand have been analyzed. Initially the search was conducted in the South China Sea, but later it was expanded and now includes 11 countries over which the aircraft could fly, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China.

The search was also expanded to Australia in the west and in the east of Kazakhstan.

On Saturday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak explained some aspects of the tragedy. It turned out that all the systems on board of "Boeing" have been disabled manually, after which the plane was deliberately taken off course. First ACARS, Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System that collects technical information about the plane was disabled. It is disabled not by turning off the toggle switch, but going to a computer and selecting this option through the keyboard.  

The part gathering information was turned off, but not the transmitter. To turn the transmitter off, someone had to climb into the electronic module under the cabin. Pilots usually do not know how to do it, said a former member of the National Council for Transport Safety of the USA (NTSB) John Goglia. This means that for another five hours the ACARS transmitter was broadcasting markers that were recorded by a satellite. However, these signals do not allow locating the aircraft.

Then the transponder responsible for communication with civilian liners and radars was turned off. The transponder transmits information about the type, height and speed of the aircraft and four digits identification transponder code (squawk code). Later the second pilot said "OK, good night." The investigating authorities said on Monday that these were the last words from the cockpit. 

The chronology of these events and the words of the pilot are disputed by various sources. Malaysians insist that the words were spoken before the devices were disconnected, which is understandable because the theory of hijacking by pilots is not a pleasant one for the government. But the plane could still be identified by military radar even with turned off communication devices. They recorded a sharp turn of the liner to the west. The plane made a U-turn and flew back toward the Straits of Malacca, gradually descending not to be detected by military radar. Before reaching the coast of Malaysia, it either flew to the north-west to the Bay of Bengal and then to Kazakhstan or the south-west in the general direction of Australia.

The Americans insist that the route has been reprogrammed for autopilot, and the traces of the "Boeing" have to be searched at two aforementioned existing air corridors. It was five hours after the radar stopped seeing it, and for two hours the satellite was accepting its signals.

This means that the theories of the involvement of persons knowing how to operate the devices of the plane are the primary ones. Theories of suicide and terrorist attacks are being considered. The crew and some of the passengers are under investigation. Everyone's biography is actively scanned. Among the passengers there were several people with fake passports, presumably the Iranians. Later the police was exposed for rigging the images. Furthermore, it became clear that "the Iranians" were simply illegal immigrants. The Chinese investigated their citizen who could have represented the Islamist resistance. He did not raise any concerns, but the director of the CIA John Brennan said that a terrorist attack was not ruled out.

Pilots' biographies were scrutinized. The aircraft commander is 53-year-old Zachary Ahmad Shah considered by Malaysian Airlines an experienced and conscientious pilot. However, he could have a motive. Zahari Ahmad Shah was an active supporter of the political opposition led by Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim. The latter was convicted of sodomy before the departure of MH370, which is a crime in Muslim Malaysia. But his friends said that the pilot was not a fanatic and could not commit an act of "political revenge."

Media also found incriminating evidence against the second copilot, 27 -year-old Abdul Hamid. There are photos showing that the pilot let the passengers he liked in his cockpit. A search in the homes of the pilots revealed that Zachary Shah had a flight simulator he assembled. The police confiscated the simulator for examination.

"This air route is a well-trodden air avenue," told Pravda.Ru Oleg Smirnov, Chairman of the Public Council of Civil Aviation "Rostransnadzor," an Honored Pilot of the USSR. "It is equipped with radar control along the entire length. I do not understand the discrepancies in the understanding the path of the aircraft. There are a few facts here. First, radars see the target only at high altitudes, and at lower altitude the angle of the rays does not allow identification. Second, the security at the airport in Kuala Lumpur did a very poor job. How could people with fake passports pass through security? There is no answer to this question. Third, the crew did not report to dispatchers when it went of course. This suggests that it was either done deliberately or a catastrophe occurred suddenly. "

Oleg Smirnov believes that since the U.S. sent an FBI delegation, hijacking is suspected. The expert does not think that the first pilot was involved in the hijacking- "This is the golden fund of aviation, and they don't create drama in the air." But if he is an extremist, then how did the special services of Malaysia miss it? "Malaysia is torn, it provides no help and only confuses the quest," concluded the expert. He thinks that given the advanced mobile systems, if people were alive, they would have sent some signal. "If it was not an accident but hijacking, then everyone was destroyed, including passengers, the crew, and the hijackers," told Pravda.Ru Oleg Smirnov.       

In conclusion, there are two other theories. British expert in the field of counterterrorism, a former scientific advisor to the British Home Office Sally Leivesley believes that the liner could become a victim of the world's first cyber hijacking, that is, it was stolen from a mobile device or USB-system installed on board the "Boeing"" for entertainment five months ago. According to her, the attackers could gain remote control of the control system of the aircraft. One source of the attack could be a mobile phone dialing malicious commands. This could change the speed, altitude and direction of the flight, as well as disable satellite detection system. The expert brought as an example a successful experiment conducted late last year at a scientific and technical conference in China, the newspaper Sunday Express reported.

A Canadian source has the alien theory suggesting that the plane was attacked by two unidentified objects (visible on the radar screens), was forced to change course and upon reaching a certain "window" was "taken to another dimension."

Ukraine to serve as deposit for western waste?

By Maria Snytkova

In light of the Ukrainian events numerous articles about the interests of the EU and the USA in Ukraine have emerged. One of these interests, according to some data, may be disposal of nuclear waste on the land that has survived the Chernobyl tragedy. Pravda.Ru tried to figure out whether this information about using Ukraine as a repository for nuclear waste was reliable.

The media reported that the EU and the U.S. were negotiating with the current central government of Ukraine regarding the disposal of nuclear waste in the western territories of the country. According to some reports, Kiev would be paid a considerable sum of money that would help to stabilize the economic situation in the country for the provision of land for the burial of nuclear waste.

A reader of Pravda.Ru wrote: "in the south of Italy and the island of Sardinia radioactive waste is stockpiled, awaiting shipment to Ukraine. Containers arriving from Syria will also be sent our way, they are just waiting for the opposition to come to power. The source of information is our countrymen working in those areas in ports. Italians are chatty and readily disclose the destination of the dangerous goods. "

In addition, social network Maxpark reported that trucks with military and nuclear waste were already at the Polish-Ukrainian border, pending the signing of a contract for the burial on the territory of Ukraine. Pravda.Ru reporter interviewed experts to find out whether Ukraine was facing a threat of becoming a nuclear burial ground for its western neighbors.

A deputy of the Ukrainian Party of Regions Oleg Tsarev  noted that the negotiations on the disposal of nuclear waste on the territory of Ukraine began long before the current events.

"These negotiations were conducted under Yushchenko and were not finished. It is quite possible that the new authorities will return to them. But I do not have this information at this time. This program was indeed in the works. Chernobyl zone was prepared for nuclear waste because the land there is already contaminated," said Tsarev. He noted that there can be no trucks with nuclear waste at the Ukrainian-Polish border because the negotiations of this kind are a lengthy process.

It is important to note that there were no official statements about delivery of nuclear waste to Ukraine. However, recently information was released that the authorities have lifted the ban on the transportation of nuclear fuel, as reported by the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine. This ban was introduced on January 28, 2014, and Rosatom already considered such methods of delivery of nuclear fuel cycle as air transport. How likely is it that lifting of this ban would open a corridor for nuclear waste from the neighboring countries to Ukraine?

"It is physically impossible because there is only Chernobyl zone, and it is full. Second, nuclear power plants in Ukraine are also filled to capacity, and the waste is not processed because there are no processing plants in Ukraine," told Pravda.Ru Russian writer, scholar and journalist Vladimir Gubarev. "These plants exist only in Russia, France and the United States. Japan has just completed construction of such plants. There are no processing plants in Ukraine. Chemical weapons trafficked from Syria cannot be buried on the territory of Ukraine. This is another bluff attempt to secure regular income. There was an idea to build a repository in the Chernobyl zone, but such a repository would be for their own waste, and not imported waste, because any waste to be disposed of has to be brought through the territory. This is very dangerous. Germany and other countries are opposed to this."

According to Vladimir Gubarev, Ukraine today has no special equipment or opportunities for the construction of storage facilities for nuclear waste. Given the situation in the country, they are unlikely to be able to implement at least one such project in the next 10 years.

"Generally when it comes to chemical weapons and nuclear waste, there is a need in special facilities, unique and very expensive. Areas that have or used to have nuclear power plants have storage for rods at each station where these rods have to be kept for several decades. They exist in France and Sweden (the entire Scandinavia brings them to Sweden), Germany, and Japan at the nuclear plants, said the expert. He added that all these facilities were built under strict supervision of the IAEA.

Of course, the provision of such repositories for nuclear waste to partners from other countries can bring billions into the budget, but the construction of such facilities is extremely costly and requires special conditions. Ukraine would have to work really hard to achieve this, stressed Vladimir Gubarev. Now the current authorities of the country have much more important things to do, such as meeting the onerous terms of the IMF loan, which would tie the hands of the Ukrainian officials in terms of economic development.

Energy dominance: US motive in Ukraine  

US President Hussein Obama

By Yuram Abdullah Weiler

 “The past five years have demonstrated that the U.S. president does not have any ethical dimension for his foreign policy - Syria is one example - let alone the question of intervening to uphold the principle of non-aggression against a sovereign state.”
—Marwan Kabalan, political analyst at the Doha Institute.

The recent U.S.-backed coup that toppled the former government in Ukraine has been couched in the noble rhetoric of democracy, humanitarian intervention and self-determination, but a closer examination reveals an ugly underside of realpolitik whose motive is energy dominance.  Like Syria, Ukraine has one of the key gas pipeline corridors coveted by the U.S. and its NATO allies that is still under the influence of a so-called R&D (resistant and defiant) country such as Russia.

To understand what is happening in Ukraine and Syria, and how Qatar and Azerbaijan are involved, we must briefly look at regional energy developments following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.  While the Persian Gulf is well known for its abundant energy resources, the Caspian Sea Basin also has seen oil exploration and production since the early 1900s. However, the U.S. and the west had scant involvement there before the end of the Cold War.  Since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the United States and Russia have engaged in fierce competition to control the energy resources of the newly created Caspian Sea littoral states.

Energy in the Caspian Sea Basin generally has been developed by consortiums composed of major international oil firms with participation of state-owned enterprises.  The first appearance of such a consortium was in 1993 when Chevron invested $20 billion in a joint venture named Tengizchevroil with the government of Kazakhstan to develop the Tengiz oil field.  Since the Caspian region is landlocked, Tengizchevroil partnered with Russia’s Lukoil to build a 900-mile long pipeline to transport the oil to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.  Then in 1994, a group of oil companies including BP, Lukoil and Unocal partnered with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) to form a consortium called Azerbaijan International Operating Company to develop three offshore oil fields. 

SOCAR has also collaborated with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Lukoil and BP Amoco in the Shah-Deniz gas project, which was established without U.S. participation due to the Iranian involvement.  Discovered in 1999 and estimated to hold over 40 trillion cubic feet of gas condensate, the Shah-Deniz gas field turned out to be one of the largest fields in the world, but transporting the gas from the region proved to be problematic.  The most logical route to export the gas product would be through Iran to the Persian Gulf, but this was ruled out by U.S. policy. The next best route would be through Chechnya to Black Sea ports via existing Russian pipelines, but political instability precluded this option.  SOCAR’s final choice of a pipeline route has had a major impact on the west’s role in the Caspian Basin gas nexus and has contributed to the current U.S.-Russia standoff over Ukraine and Crimea, as we shall see.

By 1971, energy explorers in the Persian Gulf region had discovered the South Pars / North Dome gas-condensate field, which began producing in 1989.  Jointly owned by NIOC and Qatar Petroleum, the South Pars / North Dome field is the largest in the world with estimated reserves of 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas.  In 2009, Qatar proposed a gas pipeline from the capitol Doha to Istanbul, Turkey that would cross Syria and terminate on the Mediterranean, with the gas then being shipped to Europe.  Two routes were proposed: one through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to Turkey, and the other through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria to Turkey.  When Iraq failed to endorse Qatar’s proposal, the only route left for the pipeline was through Syria.

Unfortunately, in 2009 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also declined, which left Qatar, Saudi Arabia and its western “partners” no choice but to attempt regime change in Syria.   It was precisely at that time when the U.S., ...Britain and their allies began to plan covert action to destabilize Syria, according to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas. Meanwhile, Iran, Iraq and Syria signed a deal in 2010 to build the “Friendship Pipeline,” a 3,480-mile natural gas pipeline connecting Iran’s South Pars field to European customers.  Dubbed the “Islamic Pipeline” by the west, the project would run from Iran’s South Pars gas field through Iraq, Syria and Southern Lebanon, and connect to Syrian ports for exporting gas to Europe.

On August 16, 2011, Syrian Oil Minister Sufian Allawi announced the discovery of a significant gas field near the city of Homs in the Qalamun region at Qara in the Dau Basin, adding to the country’s already substantial gas reserves of 10.3 trillion cubic feet.  Noting that the first wells drilled had a flow rate of over 14 million cubic feet per day, the Syrian oil minister commented, “This discovery opens new perspectives in the region of Qalamun and the Syrian company will continue its drilling.”  It is no coincidence that by this time, U.S. President Obama had begun calling for President al-Assad to step down, and by November, the Arab league had suspended Syria’s membership, removing all obstacles to the Qatar-led and U.S.-backed regime change campaign.  The announcement by the Arab League also coincided with the inauguration of Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline, as we will see below.

With the world’s largest proven natural gas reserves of 1,580 trillion cubic feet, Russia has come to be the dominant supplier of fossil fuels to the European Union, providing 25 percent of both its gas and oil needs.  Conversely, most of Russia’s foreign currency reserves are replenished and 40 percent of its federal revenue comes from EU energy transactions, making the relationship between the EU and Russia one of interdependency.  The U.S. has attempted to exploit this apparent Russian vulnerability, however, by bypassing the Russian gas supply chain to the European markets with the construction of the Nabucco Pipeline.

Billed as an opportunity for the EU to break free of its Russian energy dependence, the 2,060-mile Nabucco Pipeline was to run from Erzurum, Turkey, through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, to Baumgarten an der March, Austria. Backed by the U.S. and the EU at an estimated cost of $10 billion, the Nabucco Pipeline was announced in February 2002 and scheduled for completion in June 2017.  However, the project was aborted after Azerbaijan’s SOCAR and the Shah-Deniz consortium announced on June 28, 2013 that it had decided to go with the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to ship its gas exports instead.  Starting at Kipoi, Greece, TAP would traverse Albania and under the Adriatic Sea, then come ashore in southern Italy at San Foca, and on to European markets.  Originally proposed in 2003 with construction to begin in 2015, TAP is scheduled to deliver initial gas shipments to Georgia and Turkey in late 2018.

Russia, of course, has not stood idly by while the west has made numerous attempts to carve up the Caspian Sea Basin’s energy resources.  In response to the West’s attempts to find alternative gas sources for the EU, such as the ill-fated Nabucco Pipeline, Russia built the Nord Stream Pipeline, which has been in operation since November 2011 delivering gas from Vyborg, Russia to Lubmin near Greifswald, Germany via a route under the Baltic Sea.  In addition, another pipeline named South Stream, whose route is to start from Anapa, Russia near Novorossiysk, then run beneath the Black Sea surfacing at Varna Bulgaria and on to Serbia, Hungary and terminate at Baumgarten, was proposed in 2007 with completion scheduled for 2015. 

While the South Stream route will completely bypass Ukraine and Crimea, the pipelines through Ukraine remain an important link in Russia’s gas distribution system.  What we are seeing with the current U.S. policy in Ukraine is another attempt to reinstall an anti-Russian and pro-EU regime much like the Orange Government after the 2004 U.S.-instigated Color Revolution.  The U.S. aim is to install a government in Ukraine that will favor joining NATO, something which ousted president Viktor Yanukovych was against as are a majority of the Ukraine people.

The Washington-initiated overthrow of Ukraine’s government along with the referendum in Crimea to join Russia has already forced U.S. oil firms to place their plans on hold.  At a cost of $735 million, Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell had planned to drill two wells in the Black Sea some 80 kilometers from Crimea’s southwest coast. However, due to the unrest in Ukraine and the uncertain status of Crimea, the exploration licenses acquired by the oil giants now have dubious legality.  While the drilling was to be off the coast of Crimea, it was the former Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych that granted the licenses to explore in an area, which soon may no longer be under Ukrainian jurisdiction.

U.S.-NATO control of Ukraine and the pipelines that supply the EU with much of its gas from Russia is merely a step to weaken Russia.  The next objective is the removal of the Russian Naval Fleet from the Black Sea, effectively making it into a NATO lake.  The final U.S. goal is to encircle Russia with anti-missile batteries, which could down any Russian missile, thus allowing the possibility of a NATO nuclear first-strike.   And for those who still believe U.S. leaders have concern for anyone but themselves, a moment’s reflection on Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s recent expletives concerning the EU should dispel any such notion.

However, like the Nabucco Pipeline fiasco, the best U.S. efforts to achieve its goals may backfire, especially if Washington applies sanctions to Russia. “If Putin now faces the same techniques from Treasury as Tehran has suffered from, he may well start protecting Iran at the UNSC [UN Security Council] and allowing Russian banks to do more open business there,” wrote University of Michigan professor of history Juan Cole.  Moreover, he speculated, “Russia and possibly China together could begin working on an alternative to the U.S. stranglehold over global finance.”  We can only hope that it will be soon, insha’Allah (God willing).