Nigeria's Buses

Thursday, November 13, 2008 Printer Friendly Version

Despite BRT, commuters suffer and smile in public buses

By John Ameh

JUST when Nigerians started thinking that the Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, evergreen track, Shuffering and Shmiling is losing its steam, a vintage forty-four sitting, ninety-nine standing molue situation surfaces in the nation's capital, Abuja.


File
Passengers inside a crowded Abuja Urban Mass Transport.



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The forlorn look on the commuters' faces and the thick sweat dripping down their bodies seem to summarise their story- it's not a jolly good ride! The number standing, stamping at each other's feet and clutching the aluminum rail attached to the vehicle's roof, far outweighs the number sitting.

On their way to the city centre daily, they face this accustomed experience, which is regularly replayed during the scary evening "rush hour."

That is what most commuters (civil servants, private sector workers, traders, artisans and others) using the Abuja Urban Mass Transport buses face in their daily struggles to place food on their tables.

In Abuja? One would probably wonder because such scenario is typical Lagos situation where 'molue' buses dictate the pace of city transportation.

Incidentally, the bus scheme, a replica of Bus Rapid Transit, was launched for Abuja, a better-planned city, in 2006 to provide a decent method of transporting commuters to and fro the city centre from satellite communities.

But, gradually, the Lagos scenario has caught up with Abuja in less than three years of having the buses in operation. The buses are not only overloaded, but there is also the ugly scrambling to catch a place to hang at the loading points!

The Federal Capital Territory has a population of 1.4 million, according to the 2006 census, the majority of whom look up to Abuja daily to earn a living.

On the average, commuters pay between N60 and N100 per drop from the satellite towns to the city centre in privately-run small buses, depending on the distance.

Privately-run cabs (otherwise known as 'drop' or 'Kabukabu') charge even higher. The third category of players in the transportation business is the car hire or charter services provided for the affluent by the Abuja Leasing Company. The famous Abuja Green Taxi Scheme is still neither here not there.

But, with its ticket price of N50 per drop, the Abuja Urban Mass buses are arguably commuters' first choice; yet the relief that comes with the lower cost is frittered away by the harrowing experience they go through every day.

Mrs. Angela Onu, a civil servant and mother of four, who lives in Nyanya, says that government has a lot of work to do to make the bus scheme a success. She recounts her experience, "Which one do I begin with? Is it that the buses are few or that they don't come on time?

"Everyday, people wait for hours and they don't get to ride in the buses because when they become fed up, they opt for other vehicles. When a bus comes at all, it is already overloaded; of course, you do not blame people when they scramble for a particular bus because another one may not come on time."

Mr. Francis Audu, a construction worker, says that the evening rush hours are the "worse times."

"On some days, they may bring only three buses, which at most have about 207 combined sitting capacity. Meanwhile, there may be between 1,000 and 2,000 people waiting to be conveyed to a particular location, say Kubwa."

"What do we do? It becomes the survival of the fittest; that is why you see many buses overloaded and yet many commuters still want to stand just to get home", he explains.

Overloading has its consequences; a common one involving the urban mass buses is the loss of control by drivers, resulting in accidents.

"These drivers love to speed on the smooth Abuja roads; but when driving a bus that is loaded with about 150 people as against the prescribed 69, there is little a driver can do to stop an accident.

"I remember that a particular bus somersaulted at the sharp bend along the Aya-Nyanya Expressway early this year, after the driver lost control, leaving many passengers injured," another regular commuter, Olufe Daniels, tells this reporter.

A driver, who gives his first name as Emma, however, blames "most of the wahala we face" on passengers' alleged impatience.

"A lot of them are just stubborn; if you tell them to be patient and wait for the next bus, they shout at you," he claims.

By their designated route policy, the buses are expected to commute passengers to their destinations on time. For instance, a bus assigned to Karimu is expected to convey commuters to and fro Abuja from the satellite town, without branching elsewhere; by so doing, the passengers will arrive early.This has not worked as intended; the buses are very slow, arriving late and most times, they are forced to stop at points not included in their original schedules.

According to an Abuja-based transportation analyst, Dr. Godwin Okpobla, the Abuja bus scheme is facing difficulties largely because the authorities did not provide designated lanes for them.

"This was envisaged to be a kind of BRT; so, we should have special lanes for them to facilitate easy movement and efficient service delivery. But, what do we find here? These big buses are competing with cars and other smaller vehicles in the same chaotic Abuja traffic.

"The least we can have is to create special lanes for them at some points, even if they have to use the general lanes along the line", Okpobla advises.

Studies have shown that in countries with the "ideal" BRT in place, buses are completely separated from general traffic lanes.

In New Zealand for instance, the Auckland Northern Busway, is segregated from other traffic to enhance service delivery and save time.

One study argues that "in order for BRT to have greatest effect, it must have its own right-of-way, requiring space and often construction costs.

"A regular bus service would share the road with cars; a BRT service operating in mixed traffic would be subject to the same congestion, delays, and jarring and swaying rides as do ordinary city buses.

"Furthermore, signal priority systems, which are often the sole factor differentiating BRT from regular limited-stop bus service might cause severe disruptions to traffic flow on major cross streets."

However, in New Delhi, which launched its BRT in April 2008, segregated lanes for buses have only compounded the traffic problem, especially at intersections.

Officials at the Abuja Urban Mass Transport Company in the FCT, the operators of the buses, deny that inadequate number of buses is a major factor working against the progress of the system.

"We are talking of hundreds of buses, and more are coming; people have to appreciate that it takes a lot of time and re-strategising for us to get to where we want to be. There are times when you find empty buses driving about without passengers.

"During rush hours in the mornings and in the evenings, while some buses going to a particular direction are overloaded, those returning in the opposite direction are empty.

"People are just impatient; when you set rules, they prefer to break them than let them work", one official at the Maitama headquarters of the company, tells this reporter.

All attempts to get the Acting Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of AUMTCO, Abdulrazak Oniyigi, to comment on the issue failed as two visits to the premises of the organisation yielded no results.

During the first visit, which was in the morning of Monday, November 10, a member of staff on duty at his office said that the MD/CEO was out of Abuja to Lagos, but added that he was already on his way back.

"Come back in the afternoon; he has already sent for someone to come to the airport and pick him", the officer said.

When the reporter called back in the afternoon, Oniyigi was in the office, but directed the officer to take the reporter to his "second in command," Mr. Ajom.

"But, you cannot even see Ajom because he is very busy; he is in a meeting discussing the ongoing interview for fresh applicants", the staff stated.

On his part, the Public Relations Officer of the FCT, Mr. Suleiman Hazat, directed the reporter to the same Oniyigi and a certain Secretary, Transportation, who could also not be reached.

Findings, however, show that AUMTCO and some banks as well as mobile telecommunications service providers are partnering to improve the services of the buses.

As they wait for that partnership to transform to reality, Abuja commuters are "suffering and smiling", to quote one of the lines of a popular track by the late Fela.

Gaza Blackouts

Blackouts in Gaza after Israel cuts fuel
By AP AND JPOST.COM STAFF

Gaza residents were experiencing sporadic electricity blackouts, and Palestinian officials were blaming Israel for cutting off fuel shipments to their power plant.


Palestinians use a propane light in a restaurant after the electricity was cut in Gaza City [archive].
Photo: AP [file]
SLIDESHOW: Pictures of the week
The IDF military administration in Gaza spokesman Peter Lerner said the Palestinians warned their Gaza City electricity plant would run out of fuel Monday if shipments aren't resumed. He said the shipments were stopped last Wednesday because of Palestinian rocket attacks.

The Defense Ministry said Sunday no decision has been made about renewing the fuel supplies.

The Gaza City plant provides about a quarter of Gaza's electricity. Most of the rest comes directly over lines from Israel. Egypt also provides a small amount.

The fuel cuts came as a response a recent renewal in rocket fire. Five Kassam rockets were fired at at western Negev neighborhoods on Sunday, landing in the Sderot, Eshkol and Sha'ar Hanegev regions. No one was wounded and no damage was reported.

One of the Kassams landed near a kibbutz reservoir, while a second hit the fence surrounding another western Negev kibbutz. The other rockets hit open areas.

The Islamic Jihad's armed wing claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Argentinian Soccer

What Does Maradona Mean for Argentina?
By DANIEL ALTMAN
TAGS: ARGENTINA, MARADONA

The enduring affection in Argentina for Diego Maradona dates back to the 1986 World Cup triumph. (Getty Images)

Maradona was in Beijing last summer to support the Argentina Olympic soccer team, who went on to win the gold medal for the second straight time. (Getty Images)
Lobby for something long enough, and you just might get it. For years, Diego Maradona said what an honor it would be to coach Argentina’s national team, going so far as to present the position as the logical capstone to his career in soccer. Few Argentines thought the opportunity would arrive so soon.

Though a genius on the pitch – he still shows off his skills in a made-for-television five-a-side league that pits famous veterans of South American national squads against each other – Maradona has little experience as a coach. In his only stint with a major team, he led Racing Club to a record of two wins, three losses and six draws before abandoning the post.

Yet even more worrying to some Argentines is Maradona’s roller-coaster lifestyle, punctuated by frequent medical problems and political pronouncements. If he is indeed confirmed as coach of the national team, in Argentina the decision will seem both controversial and inevitable. Here is what some participants in my weekly pick-up game in Buenos Aires had to say about his potential selection:

“I love Diego, and without having experienced Diego I wouldn’t love the national team as much. But, come on man…”

“Why lie? I knew he wasn’t prepared, that out of 23 matches as a coach he won three, that anyone else would have been better, except Simeone… I don’t care about the result, I believe that the greatest creator of magic should have an opportunity.”

“If you want to give him an opportunity, start him with the under-17s and then move him up.”

“He did a noble and honest job when he was a player. His work as coach will come from the gut, not from the head, and maybe that will be good for the team.”

“Well now, what is the transitive property that means a good player has to be a good coach?”

“Yes, we Argentines have a great confusion with past ‘glory’ (Perón! Perón!).”

“Actually I’d rather see Maradona as president than as coach.”

“Enough beatifying Maradona. My mother is the person I love the most in the world, but that’s no reason to make her coach of the national team or president of the republic.”

“If it goes badly for Maradona, we will have entered – as a society – a dilemma which, if not insoluble, will at least be an intolerable stigma for a long time. How can you hate the one you love?”

“I have officially lost all hope that someday Argentina will be a better country than Uganda. If people who drank milk every day before they were one year old think this way, we’re really in for it.”

“I just bought the Trinidad and Tobago jersey! Come on, Trinidad, we’re going to the World Cup!”

The discussion then broke down into an argument about whether soccer was the most forceful embodiment of all society’s awfulness, or whether it was a game in which 22 people kicked a ball around.

Piano Music Flourishes in Nicaragua

International Piano Contest Kicks Off Monday
By Elizabeth Goodwin
Tico Times Staff | editorial@ticotimes.net

They'll Be the Judges: Fany Solter, top, and Baruch Meir, bottom, are among the premier international pianists on the judges' panel of the María Clara Cullell International Piano Competition.

Photos courtesy of María Clara Vargas

About 50 young pianists from all over Latin America will arrive in San José this week to compete in the fifth annual María Clara Cullell International Piano Competition. The musicians will face a prestigious group of judges as they compete in one of two levels in two rounds.

The intermediate-level competition, for pianists 14 to 20 years old, begins Oct. 20, while the superior level, for pianists up to 27, holds its first round the following day. The finals for each round are set for Oct. 22 and 23. On Oct. 25 at 7 p.m., the winners will hold a concert at the National Auditorium in San José's Children's Museum.

All participants must play some pieces by Costa Rican composers, including “Forest Echoes” by Juan de Dios Páez (1878-1937), and “Tlanéhuatl” by Alejandro Cardona.

The competition's judges consist of premier international musicians with an interest in the next generation of pianists, including Maria Asteriadou of Greece, Brazilian-born Fany Solter, Israeli Baruch Meir and Brian Ganz of the United States.

The competition is named after María Clara Cullell, a Costa Rican pianist who has worked to spread her music and knowledge of music throughout the world. An association in her name, together with the University of Costa Rica and the National University's schools of music, funds the competition.

–Elizabeth Goodwin

Belfast Regains Its Voice

(New York Times)
By JOSHUA HAMMER
Published: October 19, 2008
THE Friday night session was just getting started on the second floor of Maddens, a dimly lighted pub in the Cathedral Quarter of Belfast. Six musicians — a young woman fiddle player; a pony-tailed, grizzled uilleann piper; a pair of guitarists; a tin-whistler; and a bodhran, or Irish tambourine, player — sat in a circle jamming, gazing at one another, seemingly oblivious to the crowd. The music had an improvisational feel to it — sprightly and hypnotic, the vigorous melody of the fiddles skittering above the sweet, mellow tones of the bagpipes.


Midway through the set, I heard an unfamiliar language being spoken and turned to face a bearded, stringy-haired young man clad in baggy sweatshirt and jeans sitting beside me at the bar. He introduced himself as Caomhin (pronounced KEE-vin) Mac Giolla Caehain, a fiddler and devotee of Gaelic, which, like Irish folk music, has been enjoying a revival in Belfast the last few years.

Many of the people in the room, Caomhin (the name means gentle offspring) told me, were regulars — traditionalists who showed up at Maddens on Friday nights to pay homage to both the ancient language and Ireland’s rich musical heritage. “This is the real thing,” Mr. Mac Giolla Caehain said of the music.

Some 10 years after the Northern Ireland peace agreement, Belfast is in the midst of a transformation. A wave of investment — mostly from other parts of Britain — has turned this once war-torn, economically depressed city into one of Europe’s liveliest towns.

Hotels, clubs and restaurants seem to be springing up in every neighborhood; a new riverside promenade winds past acres of commercial and residential development to a giant entertainment complex in the making, the Titanic Quarter, named for the doomed luxury liner built in Belfast’s now-moribund shipyards in 1911. But perhaps nowhere is the peace dividend more pronounced than in the revival of the city’s music scene. Back in the 1960s, before the outbreak of the Troubles, Belfast was one of Europe’s most musical cities. Van Morrison, born in East Belfast, got his start playing folk tunes at a sailor’s hostel called the Maritime Hotel. (From there he landed a recording contract with Decca Records in London, and a career was born.) The city has also nurtured performers like Derek Bell and Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains and Henry McCullough, who started a folk band called Sweeney’s Men in the 1960s, later joined Joe Cocker’s band and then became the lead guitarist for Paul McCartney’s Wings.

“When I grew up in the ’60s there were 80 clubs in and around Belfast where bands could go and play. And that went down to one,” said Terri Hooley, a Belfast impresario who brought the Clash to Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles in 1977. (After fighting broke out between fired-up fans of the Clash and the police and British soldiers — a riot that became known as the Battle of Bedford Street — the promoters canceled the concert at Ulster Hall two hours before it was scheduled to begin.)

Now, however, there are at least 40 clubs around the city, including a dozen where Irish musicians go back to their roots — playing the traditional folk tunes that have formed the backdrop of Irish life for centuries. “You can hear ‘trad’ every night of the week these days,” Mr. Hooley told me.

Debate abounds about how far back the origins of traditional Irish music go; some of the songs played in the pubs of Belfast, I was told, date back more than 1,000 years, passed down from generation to generation. And it was only in the last couple of centuries that the music was written down and collected. Bands or small ensembles have probably been a part of Irish music since the early 19th century, when instruments like the fiddle and the uilleann pipes were pulled out for Irish dancing — reels, hornpipes and jigs — at weddings and saints’ days. These days perhaps the greatest display of Irish traditional music in the world takes place at the annual Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann festival, which begins with a series of competitions at the village and county level, and attracts as many as 20,000 participants.

I recently spent five nights in Belfast, venturing out every evening to sample the flowering trad scene. I started my tour on a Monday night, the slowest of the week, at a bar called Fibber Magee, around the corner from Belfast’s City Hall. It was a touristy place where a duet called Finnegans Wake played familiar Irish tunes to a crowd almost exclusively made up of Americans, Canadians and Britons.

But it didn’t take long before I found my way to more authentic hangouts — pubs frequented by, among others, former paramilitary fighters from both sides of the sectarian divide. Nearly all of these establishments can be found in the Cathedral Quarter, a slum only five years ago but now the epicenter of Belfast’s cultural and architectural renaissance. In most of them, the musicians gather once or twice a week for sessions — relaxed, informal gatherings at which the music is played as much for the benefit of the artists as for that of the audience.

On Tuesday night, a fairly quiet one in Belfast, I left my hotel and wandered past a boisterous group spilling out the door of the Spaniard, one of Cathedral’s oldest taverns. Then I turned down a narrow street lined with darkened office buildings and came upon a small, unobtrusive pub called the John Hewitt.

Opened nine years ago by the nonprofit Belfast Unemployed Resource Centre, whose managers hoped to bridge the city’s sectarian divide, the John Hewitt (named for a Belfast poet) stands blocks from a no man’s land once ruled by paramilitary gangs. The neighborhood is still dicey: across the street stands a burned-out office block.

When I arrived at the Hewitt, a trad quartet — fiddler, guitarist, drummer and uilleann piper — had just started its evening session. I met John McSherry, one of Northern Ireland’s best known players of the uilleann pipe — the Irish national bagpipe — who tours with a band called At First Light.

“There’s been a lot more vibrancy to the Belfast scene nowadays, and it just keeps getting livelier,” Mr. McSherry told me during a cigarette break in the street. He sat in a chair on the stage, wedged the uilleann pipe bellows beneath his right elbow, manipulating it to keep air flowing into the pipe bag. With his fingers dancing lightly over a series of holes on the stemlike chanter, he produced a haunting, vibratory sound with high-pitched, reedy notes skipping over a low monotone.

The Hewitt occasionally sponsors contemporary art exhibitions in tandem with the weekly sessions, and on this Tuesday evening the walls were covered with stark surrealistic paintings — prisoners squeezed into concrete cells, courtyards overlooked by watchtowers. The works were done by Raymond Watson, a former Irish Republican Army man who served eight years at Maze Prison outside Belfast. As it happened, Mr. Watson was at the pub that night. As the session players kicked off into a lively reel, he invited me to sit down at a round table packed with Hewitt regulars: poets and politicians, Protestant and Catholic ex-fighters, artists and ex-Communists, aging hippies and a few business types.

Austria's Banks

Austrian government guarantees safety for all bank savings (10/9/08)

Chanecellor Gusenbauer promised in the course of international financial crises the unlimited safety for savings at Austrian banks. The new law is retroacting valid since 1st October.

If it’s necessary the government holds out a nationalized responsibility for banks as well. Banks which have surplus liquidity should dispose their financial means in a clearing station of the Austrian control bank to help other banks, says financial minister Wilhelm Molterer.


Austrian banks are not in danger, is the conventional wisdom. All those new decisions are just arrangements to guarantee cover and protection. The government has also banned short selling from Austrias stock exchange market.

Faymann and Gusenbauer are trying to calm down Austrias population. “Everything is in control. Our banks are solid. Austria is in a very good situation. Nobody in Austria has to fear about his bank savings”, they say.

Russia's Position in the World

Article
Putin to Ukraine: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you
Front page / World / Former USSR
03.10.2008 Source: Pravda.Ru


Pages: 12

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko conducted negotiations with her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on October 2. Tymoshenko arrived in Moscow to discuss the question with the price on natural gas, which Ukraine buys from Russia.



Putin to Ukraine: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you






Experts say that Tymoshenko may take an advantage over her political rivals in Ukraine in the event the problem is solved positively for Kiev.

Tymoshenko’s trip to Moscow was quite an adventure. Her flight on board the presidential jetliner was canceled shortly before the departure. It was said that President Yushchenko supposedly needed to use the plane too for a flight to Lvov. As a result, Tymoshenko had to board a charter plane. Spokespeople for the Ukrainian prime minister in Kiev said that the incident with the plane had been plotted by Yushchenko’s camp.

Putin reminded Tymoshenko during their meeting in the Moscow region that Ukraine was making arms shipments to Georgia.

“It is a great pity that Ukraine considered it possible to deliver arms to the conflict zone,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying. “There could not be a bigger crime committed to the people of Ukraine and Russia than making arms shipments to the conflict zone,” he added after the talks.

“It was impossible to imagine several years ago that Russians and Ukrainians will be fighting each other,” Putin said. The prime minister emphasized that the shipments per se were not that significant since it was a commercial matter. “But there were military systems and people used to kill soldiers – Russian people, which is an alarming signal for us,” Putin stated.

“Has it been done for the sake of the Ukrainian nation? What are the interests of the Ukrainian people there? This is a political intrigue, an irresponsible and harmful crime, the crime, when the Russian and the Ukrainian nations clash,” Putin said.

Yulia Tymoshenko was not so emphatic in her remarks. She stated that all the accusations need to be proved first. “I do not think that the facts will be confirmed,” she said.

Vladimir Putin pointed out that the unstable political situation in Ukraine may eventually question the effectiveness of the signed agreements between Moscow and Kiev. “But I hope that they won’t be revised,” he added.

“Unfortunately, our meeting is taking place under very complicated conditions. It is connected with the uncertainty in the decisions linked with the political situation in Ukraine. One question arises in connection with the agreements that we are discussing today – what is going to happen with them tomorrow?” Putin told Tymoshenko.

Tymoshenko stated that Ukraine considers Russia as an absolute strategic partner.