You have changed the knock and O2 sensors, what sbout the speed sensor you also mentioned? If the speed sensor is bad the speedometer won't work. I suggest you have that replaced...

Hello,
We have a 3 bedroom flat to let situate off Agalaba street, Osisioma, Abia State.

*3 toilets

*borehole

Contact: Mr.Charles on 08034027587

Available

Thanks for your replies so far...am considering my options

Hello folks,

I intend to build either a 4 bedroom bungalow or 4 bedroom duplex on a piece of land measuring approximately 650sqms somewhere in dutse, Abuja. I require estimates of constructing either of the buildings, please.

Hello

How much will it cost to clear 2006 rav 4 and 2010 corolla?

I was shocked when Fox channel on GOTV portrayed Nigeria as a fraudulent nation last night in an episode of its Simpsons cartoon. This is so unfair.

me2me:
2 bed room flat available

Available

2 bed room flat available

Hello Carlcare,
My friend's camon cx has been acting up recently. It dosen't respond to commands at times, makes whatapp calls on its own, the keyboard dose not respond at times, the screen displays change at will...have tried hard reset severally and even dowloaded an update but the problem persists. What could be wrong and how much to fix it?

GrandMufti:


Yes it's a well known fact. But the issue here is OS related

How do you mean? The OS is Nougat .

Hello, for some time now WhatsApp calls in tecno camon cx don't ring out when am off the app and only see missed calls. What could be the cause and how can I resolve this?

fesriders:
Yes..available..

How much?

fesriders:
Call Me if you have any car key problem including loss of any type of car key, duplicating of any type of car key, unlocking of any car Key with forgotten code, programming of any car key with remote control and installation of any car key, We are at Ladipo auto spare parts market, Lagos. We serve customers from any part of Nigeria.. Interested customers can reach me on 014537463 or 08177747774

.

Do you have baby boy remote key fob?

toluxa1:
Wow! This is over N5,000,000 per month!

Point of correction, its per year not per month

I need dell inspiron n5050 original 6 cell battery. How much and how long does it last?

BizBloke:


Hi Me2me,

You can either have it delivered to your doorstep if you're in Lagos, Nigeria or you can pick up at our Collection Centre at Jibowu.

Thanks.

I had already already stated abuja as my location in my earlier message.

me2me:
Can you source the below and what is cost to abuja

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00AKH2XLW/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1500986039&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=honda+accord+1998-2002+remote+key+fob&dpPl=1&dpID=31xELWgR7kL&ref=plSrch#

BizBloke:


Hi Me2me,
Welcome to Specuit Cargo.

INVOICE:
Item Cost: $19.32

Total Item Cost: $19.32
Freight Fee: $13
Service Charge: $3

Sub-Total: $35.32 [N13,068]
Rewards: -N0.00
Savings: -N1,110

TOTAL: N11,958

Thanks.

12k is the total? How will I receive it at my location?

OnePunchMan:


Full payment. You would have to confirm that information in the comments section as my job is to order and ship.

Where is payment to be made?

Can you source the below and what is cost to abuja


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00AKH2XLW/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1500986039&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=honda+accord+1998-2002+remote+key+fob&dpPl=1&dpID=31xELWgR7kL&ref=plSrch#

cost of product = 6400

shipping = 3700 to abuja

How is payment effected? Full or part payment?

Can you also confirm from seller that the fob is complete with internal electronics and its not casing/shell?

Kindly find out the cost of below to abuja

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00AKH2XLW/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1500981508&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=honda+accord+1998-2002+remote+key+fob&dpPl=1&dpID=31xELWgR7kL&ref=plSrch#

Hello,
I've searched hard for the sound control shortcut to no avail or is it not included in the Nougat OS? I mean short cut for sound eg "general, vibrate, meeting, outside"..and am not talking about accessing the sound control vide "setting "..

Hello, we have for rent in a nice environment 3 units of 2 bedroom flats and a unit of 3 bedroom flat (all ensuite) situate in Emma Avenue, off Girls Secondary School, Elelenwo, Rivers State at the rate of N450,000 per annum for the 2 bedroom flats and N500,000 per annum for the 3 bedroom flat. Note the rent excludes 10% agency plus legal fees.
Kindly contact Barr. Charles on 08034027587.

Excerpt of interview granted by Suleiman Hassan , Registrar, Surveyors Council of Nigeria (SURCON):


The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) is involved in the investigation of the cause of the church collapse in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, recently. Are you also part of the investigation team?

No, we are not involved; we will only be involved when they point a finger at our member, that is when we will get involved. When their report is out then we will look at it and tell them that they should have involved us in A,B,C and D. Just like in road construction, the mistake we make in this country is that they think it is all about designs and construction mainly, but it is not. For example, a road passes through a community and somebody determines where it passes, whether it can be used for that and who is that? That is the Urban Regional Planner; he says, yes, road can pass here, then the surveyor moves in to measure the routes; then the estate surveyor now comes to access compensation; then the engineer can now come in with his bulldozer.
During the building, the builder will come in to do some mass concrete thing on bridges and culverts, when the engineer finishes, somebody is supposed to come and do the audit. The accountant general will send someone through the audit, somebody will come and assess the road. Now, when you are done with everything, somebody will manage the road. So, when they say there is no money, all the roads being concessioned and along the corridors of the roads you have to have somebody to do the cost care but it is government property. There is a right of way so somebody will have to manage the space that the kiosk is standing to collect some revenue for government to put back into the road for maintenance.
So a whole lot of people are involved but we make the mistake to say the road is an engineering concern and so they don’t want anybody to be involved, but most engineering concerns, now that we are getting wiser, and funds are not there anymore, we need to manage the resources properly, so we look at everybody that is involved and his contributions so that we make savings.

Why are we still having cases of building collapse?
We are having collapses - roads don’t collapse in one day, likewise bridges or houses. This is a surveyor’s house and the structures are supposed to be monitored annually. We are supposed to say, are these structures as they were yesterday? It is possible, maybe this house is sinking and we don’t know. I have said there may be boreholes around this place and there are over 50 people in this block so there is constant vibration. Are we still where we were? We don’t know if it is sinking or moving out of verticality, it is supposed to be measured. This house will not collapse in one day but if there are deficiencies underground from whatever reasons, it is possible it collapses. So the surveyor is supposed to be monitoring and we are not doing that. In fact, one of my recommendations to the minister some time ago when we did our briefing, was that the structures should be measured. You have MTN line, telecommunication mast all over the place, are you monitoring whether they are as erect as they were built or they are slanting.
Our transmission lines, PHCN or TCN, that pass through our villages, nobody is monitoring them, so those ones are also contributing to the problem of power that we have because they can collapse in the bushes, one won’t get to know until after some days. Meanwhile, generating companies will say we have generated 10 megawatts, it is on his way to Gombe but along the way, there are two or three poles that have collapsed, but they didn’t collapse same day, it takes time for them to collapse and what could cause that? Human activities, ecological activities, erosion and all that can happen in the bush and they are not being measured, a series of things that we are not doing.If you go to any surveyor now all he is talking about is surveying one land or building but there so many things that we need to do that we are not doing.

The issue of boreholes as a cause of building collapse, what is the solution to this?
Due to lack of potable water, boreholes are the only source of water, but it comes with a cost. And there is this mentality of ‘I pass my neighbour’ if Mr. A can have a borehole, then I think I should have mine as well.

And what is the result of too many boreholes in one location?
It is a problem; it is risky because you are sucking the underground water, and it is a health hazard because if the borehole doesn’t get water to pump out it can suck water from a nearby toilet and again 80% of people that dig borehole in their houses don’t take the water for test, they just dig and start consuming. That is why there are cases of typhoid. And when you go to the hospital, they will give you drugs, you will take them, but tomorrow you will go back and they will say it is even worst because you are taking toilet water and you don’t know. The proximity of your borehole and the toilets, these are issues that we don’t really look at.
Some landlords are even digging boreholes for commercial purposes to service different buildings. Because it is commercial, when you see them tiling it with pipes outside, you know it is money and very senior people are involved it.

Apart from the hazards boreholes pose, what can you say about the digging of normal wells as a source of water?
Well seeps in but borehole sucks so well water is even better filtered than borehole’s because the filtering is done by the natural ecosystem. With the borehole, it pulls water with the sand and everything which is why after a while you will have to remove the pipes, clean them and put them back; because they are blocked. So well water is better off than the borehole. What people do is, you dig a well and then get a pumping machine.

How is surveying faring as we speak?
How do we measure an achievement? Is it in the number of persons we have registered or by the standards of the quality of our practitioners or by the measure of their daily discipline, so these are all subjective. For those we registered I can say, yes, these people are doing so well but we as regulators, we cannot say we are doing very well, we can say we are trying our best to keep our professionals within the confines of the law for them to be competitors in the industry. We have had a successful year as we speak and we have conducted examinations, we have approved the examinations.

How do we get it right in handling building construction?
You see, in the building industry there is a building code that specifies that A,B,C should be done; first of all the plan of the area, does it have a C of O? Now in the process of getting the C of O, a surveyor is involved to do the perimeters survey, that will have nothing to do with structural defect of the property; now there is a topographic survey on a piece of land that the developer is going to come up on, the surveyor can be held liable if the topographical survey he gave was faulty, if the levels from one end of the plot is not properly taken and if the design is not based on his topographical survey. Also, when the widths are not evenly distributed and there is a collapse then the surveyor can be held liable. That is the only place they involve surveyors but in places where they are civilised they involve the surveyor in many more places. For example, the footing of any super structure when they are putting those reinforcements, the rods, sometimes they involve the surveyor to put the columns and to give the levels at which those footings are put to make sure that they are on the same footing.
Another smart engineer will also involve the surveyor in making sure that all the columns being directed at the corners are thoroughly vertical because if you put a column and it is not thoroughly vertical it opens outside and you put another structure on top of it, certainly it is not balanced but it may not collapse immediately. Since there will be human activity, it will be shaking, the vibration will be even spread and so it can cause a collapse.
So, at what point is the surveyor involved for him to be culpable and liable in a collapsed structure? Was a surveyor involved at all? They hardly even bring in surveyor. Yes, you may see somebody with an instrument on site, it will be the engineer, he will tell you he has done surveying as a unit in his training. We have that problem but for now, that is not the issue. Let us try to find out, was the surveyor involved in doing the topographic area of that site, was he involved in the erection of the columns? Some smart builders even in Abuja involve surveyors to be able to align block work properly and with this he would spend less money in doing the ranging, that is the plaster. You will need less plaster to apply on your block work but if it is not properly aligned one block will come out, another one will go in so you will need more cement to make up.
Now at the level of putting the concrete, if it is a high structure, was the surveyor involved in getting the level? Then at what point was he involved? So, these are series of issues. Even in roads, we have issues, if you take away the surveyor components in road constructions you have taken away everything. The engineer will not have anything to do because it is the surveyor who will align the road, it is the surveyor who will measure the quality of sand or concrete or tar that is being used because it is only the surveyor who can tell you that this is actually 10km and it will be evenly spread but surveyors are not involved but we will get there.

Source: www.Dailytrust.com

By Ogbonnaya Ikokwu, Umuahia

The Commissioner for Finance in Abia State, Mr. Obinna Oriaku, has described the recent labour crisis between the management and the Academic staff Union of Abia State Polytechnic, Aba, as a result of mismanagement by past administrators.

Oriaku spoke against the backdrop of the directive issued by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu that the Rector of the polytechnic, Prof. Martin Ifeanacho, and the Registrar, Mrs. Constance Evuline, to proceed on a six-month compulsory leave.

He stated that successive administrators of the polytechnic had employed staff without following due process. He added that this had resulted in a heavy wage bill difficult for the institution to pay with its internally generated revenue and the state government subvention.

He said, “This is an intuition that is just 25 years old. The wage bill in a month is N180m, but the Abia State University with the high number of professors it has and the number of year it has existed still averages N140m with a smaller student population. We commend the management for the structures that have been put in place to discourage fraud in that university.

“When we assumed office, we noticed that the management obtained a loan of N2bn from Firstbank and they were paying the bank N75m monthly. We said, ‘This institution that was not into importation of stockfish, how can it pay N75m monthly and still be able to raise revenue to pay salaries? So, the state government took over the loan and directed them to use the IGR to pay salary while we pay back the loan.

“We also discovered that Abia Polytechnic has 44 accounts in less than 23 banks. That means that the school was destined to go the way we are seeing it today. We later set up structures and streamlined all those accounts into one collecting bank which is Union Bank. Every student now pays through the portal.

“Before now, students were paying school fees in cash or through banks tellers. At the last meeting we had with the management, there were about eight to nine accounts that had yet to been uploaded into that account.

“Abia Polytechnic has 99 gatemen and 40 people work in its Library that cannot pass for a library of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, it has almost 50 people in its Medical Unit with three matrons and doctors. That is just recklessness on the part of people who presided over that institution over the years. The workforce is 12,000 and over 800 are senior staff which means the top is very heavy.”

The commissioner disclosed the changes effected in the polytechnic were as a result of the report of a number of committees set up by the state government to review the activities of the polytechnic.

Copyright PUNCH.

By Ogbonnaya Ikokwu, Umuahia

The Commissioner for Finance in Abia State, Mr. Obinna Oriaku, has described the recent labour crisis between the management and the Academic staff Union of Abia State Polytechnic, Aba, as a result of mismanagement by past administrators.

Oriaku spoke against the backdrop of the directive issued by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu that the Rector of the polytechnic, Prof. Martin Ifeanacho, and the Registrar, Mrs. Constance Evuline, to proceed on a six-month compulsory leave.

He stated that successive administrators of the polytechnic had employed staff without following due process. He added that this had resulted in a heavy wage bill difficult for the institution to pay with its internally generated revenue and the state government subvention.

He said, “This is an intuition that is just 25 years old. The wage bill in a month is N180m, but the Abia State University with the high number of professors it has and the number of year it has existed still averages N140m with a smaller student population. We commend the management for the structures that have been put in place to discourage fraud in that university.

“When we assumed office, we noticed that the management obtained a loan of N2bn from Firstbank and they were paying the bank N75m monthly. We said, ‘This institution that was not into importation of stockfish, how can it pay N75m monthly and still be able to raise revenue to pay salaries? So, the state government took over the loan and directed them to use the IGR to pay salary while we pay back the loan.

“We also discovered that Abia Polytechnic has 44 accounts in less than 23 banks. That means that the school was destined to go the way we are seeing it today. We later set up structures and streamlined all those accounts into one collecting bank which is Union Bank. Every student now pays through the portal.

“Before now, students were paying school fees in cash or through banks tellers. At the last meeting we had with the management, there were about eight to nine accounts that had yet to been uploaded into that account.

“Abia Polytechnic has 99 gatemen and 40 people work in its Library that cannot pass for a library of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, it has almost 50 people in its Medical Unit with three matrons and doctors. That is just recklessness on the part of people who presided over that institution over the years. The workforce is 12,000 and over 800 are senior staff which means the top is very heavy.”

The commissioner disclosed the changes effected in the polytechnic were as a result of the report of a number of committees set up by the state government to review the activities of the polytechnic.

Copyright PUNCH.

Excerpt of interview granted by Suleiman Hassan , Registrar, Surveyors Council of Nigeria (SURCON):


The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) is involved in the investigation of the cause of the church collapse in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, recently. Are you also part of the investigation team?

No, we are not involved; we will only be involved when they point a finger at our member, that is when we will get involved. When their report is out then we will look at it and tell them that they should have involved us in A,B,C and D. Just like in road construction, the mistake we make in this country is that they think it is all about designs and construction mainly, but it is not. For example, a road passes through a community and somebody determines where it passes, whether it can be used for that and who is that? That is the Urban Regional Planner; he says, yes, road can pass here, then the surveyor moves in to measure the routes; then the estate surveyor now comes to access compensation; then the engineer can now come in with his bulldozer.
During the building, the builder will come in to do some mass concrete thing on bridges and culverts, when the engineer finishes, somebody is supposed to come and do the audit. The accountant general will send someone through the audit, somebody will come and assess the road. Now, when you are done with everything, somebody will manage the road. So, when they say there is no money, all the roads being concessioned and along the corridors of the roads you have to have somebody to do the cost care but it is government property. There is a right of way so somebody will have to manage the space that the kiosk is standing to collect some revenue for government to put back into the road for maintenance.
So a whole lot of people are involved but we make the mistake to say the road is an engineering concern and so they don’t want anybody to be involved, but most engineering concerns, now that we are getting wiser, and funds are not there anymore, we need to manage the resources properly, so we look at everybody that is involved and his contributions so that we make savings.

Why are we still having cases of building collapse?
We are having collapses - roads don’t collapse in one day, likewise bridges or houses. This is a surveyor’s house and the structures are supposed to be monitored annually. We are supposed to say, are these structures as they were yesterday? It is possible, maybe this house is sinking and we don’t know. I have said there may be boreholes around this place and there are over 50 people in this block so there is constant vibration. Are we still where we were? We don’t know if it is sinking or moving out of verticality, it is supposed to be measured. This house will not collapse in one day but if there are deficiencies underground from whatever reasons, it is possible it collapses. So the surveyor is supposed to be monitoring and we are not doing that. In fact, one of my recommendations to the minister some time ago when we did our briefing, was that the structures should be measured. You have MTN line, telecommunication mast all over the place, are you monitoring whether they are as erect as they were built or they are slanting.
Our transmission lines, PHCN or TCN, that pass through our villages, nobody is monitoring them, so those ones are also contributing to the problem of power that we have because they can collapse in the bushes, one won’t get to know until after some days. Meanwhile, generating companies will say we have generated 10 megawatts, it is on his way to Gombe but along the way, there are two or three poles that have collapsed, but they didn’t collapse same day, it takes time for them to collapse and what could cause that? Human activities, ecological activities, erosion and all that can happen in the bush and they are not being measured, a series of things that we are not doing.If you go to any surveyor now all he is talking about is surveying one land or building but there so many things that we need to do that we are not doing.

The issue of boreholes as a cause of building collapse, what is the solution to this?
Due to lack of potable water, boreholes are the only source of water, but it comes with a cost. And there is this mentality of ‘I pass my neighbour’ if Mr. A can have a borehole, then I think I should have mine as well.

And what is the result of too many boreholes in one location?
It is a problem; it is risky because you are sucking the underground water, and it is a health hazard because if the borehole doesn’t get water to pump out it can suck water from a nearby toilet and again 80% of people that dig borehole in their houses don’t take the water for test, they just dig and start consuming. That is why there are cases of typhoid. And when you go to the hospital, they will give you drugs, you will take them, but tomorrow you will go back and they will say it is even worst because you are taking toilet water and you don’t know. The proximity of your borehole and the toilets, these are issues that we don’t really look at.
Some landlords are even digging boreholes for commercial purposes to service different buildings. Because it is commercial, when you see them tiling it with pipes outside, you know it is money and very senior people are involved it.

Apart from the hazards boreholes pose, what can you say about the digging of normal wells as a source of water?
Well seeps in but borehole sucks so well water is even better filtered than borehole’s because the filtering is done by the natural ecosystem. With the borehole, it pulls water with the sand and everything which is why after a while you will have to remove the pipes, clean them and put them back; because they are blocked. So well water is better off than the borehole. What people do is, you dig a well and then get a pumping machine.

How is surveying faring as we speak?
How do we measure an achievement? Is it in the number of persons we have registered or by the standards of the quality of our practitioners or by the measure of their daily discipline, so these are all subjective. For those we registered I can say, yes, these people are doing so well but we as regulators, we cannot say we are doing very well, we can say we are trying our best to keep our professionals within the confines of the law for them to be competitors in the industry. We have had a successful year as we speak and we have conducted examinations, we have approved the examinations.

How do we get it right in handling building construction?
You see, in the building industry there is a building code that specifies that A,B,C should be done; first of all the plan of the area, does it have a C of O? Now in the process of getting the C of O, a surveyor is involved to do the perimeters survey, that will have nothing to do with structural defect of the property; now there is a topographic survey on a piece of land that the developer is going to come up on, the surveyor can be held liable if the topographical survey he gave was faulty, if the levels from one end of the plot is not properly taken and if the design is not based on his topographical survey. Also, when the widths are not evenly distributed and there is a collapse then the surveyor can be held liable. That is the only place they involve surveyors but in places where they are civilised they involve the surveyor in many more places. For example, the footing of any super structure when they are putting those reinforcements, the rods, sometimes they involve the surveyor to put the columns and to give the levels at which those footings are put to make sure that they are on the same footing.
Another smart engineer will also involve the surveyor in making sure that all the columns being directed at the corners are thoroughly vertical because if you put a column and it is not thoroughly vertical it opens outside and you put another structure on top of it, certainly it is not balanced but it may not collapse immediately. Since there will be human activity, it will be shaking, the vibration will be even spread and so it can cause a collapse.
So, at what point is the surveyor involved for him to be culpable and liable in a collapsed structure? Was a surveyor involved at all? They hardly even bring in surveyor. Yes, you may see somebody with an instrument on site, it will be the engineer, he will tell you he has done surveying as a unit in his training. We have that problem but for now, that is not the issue. Let us try to find out, was the surveyor involved in doing the topographic area of that site, was he involved in the erection of the columns? Some smart builders even in Abuja involve surveyors to be able to align block work properly and with this he would spend less money in doing the ranging, that is the plaster. You will need less plaster to apply on your block work but if it is not properly aligned one block will come out, another one will go in so you will need more cement to make up.
Now at the level of putting the concrete, if it is a high structure, was the surveyor involved in getting the level? Then at what point was he involved? So, these are series of issues. Even in roads, we have issues, if you take away the surveyor components in road constructions you have taken away everything. The engineer will not have anything to do because it is the surveyor who will align the road, it is the surveyor who will measure the quality of sand or concrete or tar that is being used because it is only the surveyor who can tell you that this is actually 10km and it will be evenly spread but surveyors are not involved but we will get there.


Source: www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/property/

more photos

A starving child who was left for dead by his parents who thought he was a witch has been pictured full of joy as he sets off for for his first day at school. Photographs of the little boy known as Hope broke the world's hearts last year after a charity worker found him emaciated and riddled with worms after being abandoned. Having made a miraculous recovery, the now healthy-looking youngster set off to embark on his education in a strapping red outfit. The healthy-looking boy has made a remarkable recovery after his traumatic ordeal
Hope was rescued by Danish charity worker Anja Ringgren Loven, who was working in Africa. The then two-year-old Nigerian boy was found in a shocking state last year. Hope was abandoned by his family because they thought he was a witch and was found in the streets by Anja Ringgren Loven, a Danish woman living in Africa, in January 2016. Almost a year on to the day, she posted amazing before and after photographs of her holding a water bottle up to the boy's mouth. In an emotional Facebook post, she wrote: 'On the 30th of January 2016 I went on a rescue mission with David Emmanuel Umem, Nsidibe Orok and our Nigerian team. 'A rescue mission that went viral, and today it's exactly one year ago the world came to know a young little boy called Hope. This week Hope will start school.'

Back in January, Ms Loven found the boy after he spent eight months fending for himself and living off scraps. She bent down and gently began feeding him and giving him water from a bottle. She then wrapped up the disorientated toddler in a blanket and took him to the nearest hospital for treatment. When Hope reached the hospital, he was given medication to remove the worms from his stomach and daily blood transfusions to incorporate more red blood cells into his body, Ms Loven said. And two days after the aid worker asked for the community's help with Hope's costly medical bills, she received more than $1million in donations from around the world.


Just eight weeks later, Hope was unrecognisable having gained weight and pictured smiling and playing with other children. Ms Loven is the founder of African Children's Aid Education and Development Foundation, which she created three years ago to help children who have been labelled witches and therefore neglected or even killed by the members of their community. 'Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we've both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children,' she wrote on Facebook, accompanying images of her feeding the young boy and appealing for donations to help pay for his medical bills in January. 'With all the money, we can, besides giving Hope the very best treatment, now also build a doctor clinic on the new land and save many more children out of torture.' she said two months after his rescue.

She and her husband, David Emmanuel Umem, began building their own orphanage in late January last year.


By Gareth Davies For Mailonline

Women and children are always worst hit by unrest..

Ummi Hassan sat on the trunk of a felled tree, her eyes fixed on her bulging belly. She was just weeks away from giving birth but tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I was in love with a soldier who got me pregnant,” she told AFP recently on the outskirts of the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, in northeast Nigeria.

“He was redeployed when I was two months pregnant,” she explained.

Ummi, 18, and her army lover kept in touch by telephone and she hoped to join him one day to bring up their baby in the economic capital Lagos, 1,200 kilometres (760 miles) away in the southwest. But she said her dreams were crushed when he refused to provide money for her antenatal care.

“I don’t have food to eat, I only eat what I get from friends,” she added.

Ahmed Bolori, the coordinator of local charity the Fa’ash Foundation, said the teenager was one of “hordes” of young women seduced by soldiers sent to the northeast to fight Boko Haram.

“A lot of young women have been impregnated by military officers who take advantage of these women,” he said.

“Before the pregnancy is detected the military officer is posted to another place and he cannot be traced.” Kaltime Ari, also 18, said the father of her young son was also a soldier. He gave her money for an abortion but she refused to go through with it, she said.

“I was four months pregnant when he left and I don’t know where he is now. His phone is not reachable.”

Amina Mohammed’s soldier boyfriend was redeployed to northern Borno state when she was three months pregnant with her son, Umar. Now aged two, the toddler has never seen his father.

“His colleague took me to Konduga (37 kilometres, 23 miles from Maiduguri) to see him but I was told he had been redeployed to Gwoza 90 kilometres away,” she explained.

“It was dangerous for me to go to Gwoza at the time because of Boko Haram, which made me come back and accept my fate.”
– Poverty, hunger, impunity –

The three women talk of futile attempts to force their boyfriends to take responsibility, visits to the men’s superiors, being brushed off with excuses and having to survive on charity.

Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency has killed 20,000 and made more than 2.6 million homeless in the northeast since 2009. But Bolori said the abandoned women were just as much victims.

“They are invariably poor, hungry and uneducated which make them ready prey for the soldiers. Impunity also emboldens the perpetrators who go unpunished,” he said.

In October last year, Human Rights Watch said camp leaders, civilian vigilantes, police officers and soldiers had raped and sexually exploited women and girls displaced by the conflict.

The organisation said it had documented 43 cases of abuse in July at seven camps in Maiduguri for displaced people. Women and girls were forced into sex and given false promises of marriage, food and money. But they were abandoned if they became pregnant.

The government has promised a “discreet and unbiased investigation” into the claims, about which President Muhammadu Buhari said he was “worried and shocked”. Supplies of food, clothing and medicine have been irregular to those who have fled the violence; many of the women are widowed and the girls orphaned, making them vulnerable to exploitation. Kaltime said desperate times have led to desperate measures.

“There is hunger in Maiduguri, people don’t have food and have no money to buy anything to eat,” she added.

“This is why many young women like me end up sleeping with soldiers and getting pregnant because they are the ones with money to spend.”

Ummi and Kaltime said their parents kicked them out when they discovered the pregnancies. Ummi moved in with friends while Kaltime went to her godmother’s. Amina still lives with her parents but says their attitude towards her has changed and she is no longer treated with love and affection. Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim and conservative. Women who become pregnant outside marriage face rejection by their families for supposedly bringing them dishonour.

“In our culture unwanted pregnancies are really unwanted,” said Bolori, warning of the need to accept the children regardless of the manner of their birth.

“The danger is that the children born by these sex victims will grow to be more dangerous than Boko Haram if discrimination against them is not checked.”

There was no immediate response from the military when contacted by AFP.

Source: www.punchng.com