Lagos State to ban ‘Omo Onile’

March 7, 2013

The Lagos State House of Assembly is to begin deliberations on a bill seeking to frustrate and criminalise the activities of land grabbers, land speculators also known as ‘Omo Onile’ and regulate the activities of agents dealing with issues of land in the state.

This hint was dropped on the floor of the House by the Chairman, Committee on Judiciary, Public Complaints and Petitions, Sanai Agunbiade, while presenting a report about land tussle in the state.

Agunbiade informed his colleagues that the bill, a private member bill which already has the blessing of the executive arm of the state government, will soon be presented to the House for further deliberations and passage.

The lawmaker, in the report he would present, said one of the recommendations include providing a law to curb the excesses of land speculators.

“I want to inform this House that there is a bill to that effect. It is a private member bill.

“The Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice has made his inputs and the bill will soon be presented to the House.”

The lawmakers all agreed that it was a good idea to come up with such a bil against land speculators who have perpetrated violence in parts of the state.

In some situations, agents and ‘omo-oniles’ sell a particular plot or parcel of land to several people and then bolt with their money. This results in violence and court cases among the buyers.

PHCN abandons surveillance helicopters at Lagos airport

March 7, 2013

Indications emerged on Wednesday that the Power Holding Company of Nigeria had abandoned four helicopters worth millions of dollars at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos.

Investigations t revealed that the German-made Bolkow 105 helicopters had not flown in the last one year following internal disagreements among some key PHCN officials on how they should be run.

The helicopters are used for surveillance of PHCN installations across the country, including detection of faults arising from bad or disjointed cables, especially in remote locations that are difficult to access by road.

Further findings revealed that the helicopters were being maintained for PHCN by Pan African Airlines, which is based at the Lagos airport.

Sources familiar with the situation said Pan African could not carry out maintenance on the helicopters any more because PHCN was not forthcoming in terms of providing necessary funds for the continuous operation and maintenance of the aircraft.  As a consequence, the aircraft became grounded.

According to the sources, the multimillion dollar helicopters have not flown in the last one year before the latest development.

A source close to the situation explained, “The helicopters have not been flying for a very long time now. At least, in the last one year, I am sure they have not flown. The problem is that some PHCN officials want to be making money from running the helicopter section.

“Some top officials too are showing interest in making money. All these created some differences in opinion, a situation which has left the helicopters grounded for a very long time.”

A top official of Pan African Airlines, who preferred to speak under the condition of anonymity, said the grounding of the helicopters was not the fault of his company.

He confirmed that PHCN was not forthcoming in terms of funds and other logistics necessary for the continuous maintenance of the helicopters.

The Pan African official said, “We provided maintenance for the helicopters, but that maintenance stopped two years ago, and PHCN has not come since then. The reason the helicopters are on the ground, we don’t know.”

The General Manager, Public Affairs, PHCN, Mrs. Efuru Igbo, could only confirm that the helicopters belonged to the company.

She, however claimed not to be aware the aircraft had stopped flying for a long time, adding tat they were being used for line tracing by the company.

Igbo asked our correspondent to get in touch with the Assistant General Manager, Eko Electricity Distribution Company Plc, Mr. Pekun Adeyanju to link him with one captain Mike in charge of the helicopters.

 When contacted, Adeyanju said he did not know the pilot Igbo was referring to. He advised our correspondent to link up with PHCN’s General Manager in charge of Transmission through Igbo.

When our correspondent contacted Igbo again, she did not pick the repeated calls made to her telephone line and she neither responded to a text message sent to the number.

The Assistant General Manager, Transmission Company of Nigeria, Mr. Dave Fabiyi directed our correspondent to the Assistant General Manager, Aviation, PHCN, Captain Mike Ighofose.

Efforts to get Ighofose to comment on the matter failed as calls made to his line did not get through. Sources at the GAT where the helicopters are currently parked said two of the choppers had become unserviceable while the remaining two were still serviceable.

They explained that with routine maintenance, the two serviceable aircraft would start flying while the two unserviceable aircraft would require heavy maintenance to fly again.

The sources could not estimate how much it would cost to get the aircraft back to operation.

Aviation experts said PHCN’s action was a waste of public resources pointing out that aircraft were not meant to be kept on the ground for a very long time.

[Punch]

Lagos to Extend Eko Atlantic City Project

07 Mar 2013

Governor Babatunde Fashola

The Lagos State Government Tuesday unfolded plans to extend the Eko Atlantic City Project from the Bar Beach in Victoria Island to Alpha Beach in Lekki, as a way of permanently protecting lives and property along the state’s section of the Atlantic Ocean.

It also lamented the refusal of the Federal Government to fulfil its promise to address ocean erosion, which it said, affected strategic parts of the state before it took the initiative to build the Eko Atlantic City as a permanent solution to the ecological challenge.

The state Governor, Mr.  Babatunde Fashola (SAN), explained the state’s response to ecological challenges during an inspection of some strategic projects in Lekki and Victoria Island yesterday, noting that the Federal Government had not given assistance to the state government in tackling the challenge.

Fashola, accompanied by  the state’s Commissioner for the Environment, Mr. Tunji Bello and his Works and Infrastructure counterpart, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, among others, inspected the International Arbitration Centre in Lekki, Maternal and Childcare Centre in Ajah, Lekki-Ikoyi Link Bridge, Ozumba Mbadiwe Road project, Fairmont Garden Mixed Development and Dolphin jetty project.

During the inspection, the governor expressed the resolve of the state government “to protect lives and property along the shore. It is a major ecological challenge for the state. We are going to build and protect for another 7.3 kilometres and that would get to Alpha Beach.

“Last August, we had a big storm when the Atlantic ran into the Kuramo and threatened all the property in that axis. You will recall that we had to abandoned few projects that we intended to do on that axis and re-ordered our budget so that we could respond to the emergency to safe lives in some of the estates located on the axis.

“We are constructing infrastructure that will limit the ability of the sea to continue to affect the shoreline there and what we have seen in about six months work is very encouraging. We have saved property that would have been submerged.

“If we have not acted, the story would have been different. Perhaps, it is one of the significant projects that our budget implementation achieved last year. There is still a distance to go. That project will last three years. So we have only awarded the first phase.”

The governor lamented that in spite of the threat of ocean surge to lives and property along the Atlantic Ocean, the state government “has not received any help from anyone. But we continued because this is the right way to spend tax payers’ money.”

He, however, explained that the state government “is currently executing about 1,966 projects across the state ” and only about 300 of the projects had been inspected so far.

Source: This Day Live

Two missing kids found dead in Ketu, Lagos

March 5, 2013

Falilu and Toheeb

Ketu area of Lagos State was thrown into confusion after the shocking discovery of the corpses of two toddlers, Toheeb Adedokun and Tajudeen Falilu, who disappeared in January.
PUNCH Metro had reported exclusively on January 30, 2013, that the missing children were suspected to have been kidnapped when all efforts to locate them proved abortive.
However, the corpses of the children were found in an abandoned vehicle, two houses away from their parents’ home on Taike Street.
Reliable sources told our correspondent that the vehicle was a Honda Pilot Sports Utility Vehicle which the owner had used as collateral and thus abandoned it.
The source said after the children wandered off, they went into the vehicle and were trapped inside, causing them to suffocate.
He said, “We had searched all over for the children to no avail and assumed they were kidnapped. Even the police thought it was kidnap. Only if we had known that the children were trapped in a vehicle in the next compound, we would have saved them.”
The spokesperson for the state police command, Ngozi Braide, confirmed the discovery to our correspondent on the telephone.

Culled from Punch Metro