Air Traffic Engineers Threaten to Strike

Nigeria's National Association of Aircraft Engineers, or NAAE, have threatened to walk off the job, which would close Nigeria's airspace until they returned to work. The threatened strike was sparked by claims by the NAAE of disparities in the "increment of allowances of air traffic controllers." The president of the association, Bulus Bodam, said that professions in the same working environment should be treated equally. The NAAE has given the government notice that it will withdraw its service of providing critical instruments such as navigation and radar equipment. This threat is being taken seriously by the government's aviation department, and if left unresolved, the impending strike will remove necessary, if inefficient and substandard, equipment for airtravel and will ground all Nigerian flights.

Read more

This article demonstrates the ability of workers and unions to pressure the government to succumb to their demands. The ability of these pressures from the bottom to actually reach the government, while inconvienient for many, are a sign that some power may be shifting to ordinary people who have found a way to make their demands heard.

Grade this post

Distribution of Oil Income not Equal

Nigeria's income from oil revenue is huge. But much of that wealth does not reach the common people. This article features some of the groups that have come out on the losing end of this unequal arrangement - the Rumuekpe Youth Council, comprised of armed young people from the formerly-inhabited town of Rumuekpe, and the Rumuekpe Justice Fighters, a more organized group of men from the same town who relocated to Port Harcourt, the regional capital. Both groups agree that the four multi-national oil companies opperating in Rumuekpe did not invest in the community and are willing to react, an example of pressure from the bottom up, if revenue is not, in their opinion, distributed fairly. The oil producers argue that they are paying the rightful owners of the land they opperate on.
There is no question that oil has the potential to boost Nigeria's local economies. What is in question is the method of delegating these revenues. The Rumuekpe Justice Fighters claim that the current method of paying landowners divides the community against itself, a coinciding cleavage, and that the only way to peacefully repopulate Rumuekpe is to distribute funds directly to the community.

Read More

"Grade this post"

Pirates in Nigeria Attack Again

In the report it is announced that The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) recently attacked a tanker carrying diesel right off the coast of Rivers state coast. This attack is unusually rare because most piracy attacks are typically on oil service boats and not large tankers like the recent incident occurred on. In addition to attacking the tanker, MEND has also kidnapped the Romanian crew that was on board at the time of the attack but promise that the men will be ‘released unharmed’.

The militant groups in Nigeria say they have resorted to piracy in order to achieve a fairer distribution of oil wealth in Nigeria and their efforts have actually cut oil production by a fifth in the past three years. But it is also known that many other armed groups make money out of oil theft under some powerful corrupt political figures in Nigeria.

This is not the first act of piracy form MEND (Nigeria's most public armed group), and the United Kingdom has decided to aid Nigeria and give the country military training in order to help the government stop the growing problem.

Read full story...

The article contains first hand examples of the social cleavages between classes in Nigeria. The group, Mend, says their purpose is for equal distribution of oil wealth which illustrates that most of the wealth in the country probably goes to the rich and prominent leaders, and not the mass majority of citizens. Also, because of the pressures from below like armed organizations that undermine the rule of law and adopt piracy, oil production has been cut mostly because of the violence caused by those groups. The groups also can be seen as part of a civil society, making up a “third sector” that is fighting for equal treatment of all citizens that give a voice to people who also believe that distribution should be equal to all.

"Grade This Post"