The Nation Newspaper

Tag: groan

  • Aboru residents groan as flood wreaks havoc

    Aboru residents in Alimosho Local Government of Lagos State yesterday counted loses caused by flood.

    This followed a heavy rain that lasted from Sunday night till early hours of Monday.

    The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that because of the flood, residents could not sleep.

    NAN observed that they stood at the frontage of their houses and shops, lamenting the havoc caused by the rain.

    Some were seen carrying belongings affected by the rain outside.

    Fences were pulled down, while the Aboru Road in Iyana-Ipaja was filled with mud and garbage moved to the area by the flood.

    Residents and shop owners, who spoke with NAN, attributed the recurring flood to the alleged abandoned bridge connecting Iyana-Ipaja to Aboru.

    They said the bridge was taking much water than it could.

    According to the people, whenever it rained, not only in the area, but also in other places such as Abule Egba, Abattoir in Agege, the water being channelled to the bridge affected residents of the area.

    An elderly landlord, Mr. Solomon Egbodhoroma, said: “We have been suffering because of the abandoned bridge.”

    He alleged that what the government built was a culvert and not a bridge.

    Egbodhoroma said: “I could not sleep since 2am when the rain started because the water spilled over to the window level of my one storey building and pulled down my fence.

    “Our challenge in Aboru is the canal that the government refuses to construct. What is here is better described as a culvert, not a bridge. Every year, we suffer a lot and lose property.

    “The recurrent flood has sent away people on my ground floor as you can see. I have been restricted to the upstairs and every year, my house is always affected.

    “The channelisation of over 35 drainages to this area is a problem we face. The government has refused to do it even after the contract was said to have been awarded in 2012.’’

    The retired civil servant, who recalled that he got to the area in 1979, said landlords had made efforts to fix the problem.

    “We have written to the state government and house of assembly without result.

    “After series of letters, the government refused to answer us. We went there to protest and they promised to come, but they did not. We are appealing to the government to come and build this bridge.

    “Where can I go from here being close to 70 years? A lot of people have left after losing property. I have suffered enough,” he said.

    A septuagenarian landlord, Harry Iduwe, urged the government to help them by ensuring the construction of a standard bridge that could withstand the volume of water channelled into it.

    Iduwe, whose house was also affected by flood, said the canal had been bringing untold hardship annually to residents.

    “Any time it rains, we are in trouble, as water flows from the canal to the streets. We implore the government to assist us,” he said.

    A furniture maker, Mr. Gift Wejem, said the flood did not only carry away a set of furniture and wood kept outside the shop, but also affected materials, machines and power plant kept in the shop.

    “The situation was not like this when I came in. The problem is flood and the increasing volume of water channelled here. The bridge we have here is not a bridge.

    “Since much water is expected to pass into it, it gets filled up and water flows back to nearby houses,” he said.

    Mr. Suleiman Adedokun, a shop owner, said: “This water is too much. It entered my shop. As you can see, I have been moving the water out since morning.

    “The government should please come and do this canal, drains and road. It is long overdue. This road and drain must be raised to end our plight.”

  • Grocery operators groan under shoplifting

    Grocery operators groan under shoplifting

    Shoplifting has become a pain in the neck of supermarkets and other retail outlets. Retailers are taking preventive measures, deploying Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in their stores. The cost of acquiring and maintaining such gadgets as well as training security personnel is affecting their profitability, reports TONIA ‘DIYAN

    For retailers, particularly supermarkets, shoplifting is a big problem. The rising cases of shoplifting in major supermarkets is taking a heavy toll on profitability. Although, it is difficult to estimate how much operators in the Nigerian retail sector loses to shoplifting annually because of the country’s poor record-keeping culture, operators and stakeholders say that Nigeria, given her population, takes the lion share of the over $128 billion the global retail industry lost last year to shoplifting, according to a research report by the Global Retail Theft Barometer.
    As if the figure was not enough heartache for operators, global Retail Theft Barometer, which tracks shoplifting, trends as well as the leading causes and methods of prevention, warned that shoplifting would likely increase during this festive season, including public holidays and Easter, which are generally busier for retailers. “Shoplifting increases during busy retail operation periods like weekends and afternoons, as the stores would be less focused on petty theft and shoplifting. This makes it easier for items to be stolen and concealed by perpetrators without being detected,” an expert and head of Consumer Goods Council, South Africa (CGCSA) Crime Risk Initiative, Graham Wright, added.
    According to experts, shoplifting, also known as five-finger discount, or shrinkage in the global retail industry parlance, is theft of goods from a retail establishment. It is one of the most common property crimes dealt with by police and courts. But in Nigeria where records of such crimes are either inaccurate or not kept at all, owners of retail outlets across the country are getting increasingly apprehensive over the rising cases of shoplifting. This is particularly so now that supermarkets and grocery store owners are expanding the scope of goods they carry and size of their stores in preparation for the festive season.
    The most common targets of shoplifters are ‘hot products’, or small items that can be easily concealed. According to experts, such products can be quickly resold through informal markets at cheaper prices. Most shoplifters, The Nation learnt, are amateurs; however, there are people and groups who make their living from shoplifting, and they tend to be more skilled. This means that on daily basis operators are faced with the challenge of arresting runaway, internally coordinated theft by both senior and junior staff in what experts say could be an established network of organised crime.
    The emerging organised network is said to be targeting high-value products such as electronics, furniture, baby food products, cosmetics and general food items. Yet, for operators, the greatest challenge appears to be Nigeria’s legal system, which is said to be not punitive enough to deter shoplifting, either as perpetrated by shoppers or unscrupulous employees.
    “Shoplifting is one of the challenges grocery stores face. Some of them attract hoodlums depending on the area they are located,” says Ms Olamide Matthew of Home Affairs Supermarket in Gbagada, Lagos. She said because of this, the management spends resources on state-of-the-art security gadgets to stop shoplifters and hoodlums in their track.
    The story is the same at Justrite in Abule Egba, Lagos. The Manager, Mr Ahmed Tijani, said shoplifting has become a major challenge. “We often have issues of shoppers doing away with items on the shelf without paying for them. As a result, the store gradually loses its income. The management of Justrite has however, boosted its security architecture by acquiring Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras to monitor buying and selling activities in the store.
    To drive home his point, Tijani narrated how a shoplifter was caught sometime last year and was arrested. Hear him: “A lady was arrested for allegedly shoplifting our grocery items mid last year. She came in at 9:30 pm when the store attendants were hurrying to go home. She picked some can drinks and tried to hide them inside her backpack. She was however, caught by our store detective, who arrested her.”
    Indeed, the use of CCTV is becoming one of the most preferred anti-shoplifting technologies. “The surveillance camera doesn’t just help in curbing criminal activities such as shoplifting; it increases our senses of security. We stand assured because CCTV guarantees protection of our property,” the sales representative at Azlas Supermarket, Ojota, Lagos, Mr. Sunday Omokaro, said. He said if a shoplifter is aware that he is under watch, he would think twice before stealing anything. “The thieves are cautious that they might get caught, and may abstain from criminal activity,” he said.
    However, CCTVs and other anti-shoplifting measures do not come cheap, as they run into hundreds of thousands, depending on its sophistication and specification. Also, the use of CCTVs to apprehend shoplifters in the act requires full-time human monitoring of the cameras, and the human monitors must be paid. Besides, grocery owners are paying through their noses to hire, train, and maintain security personnel. And the resources for doing so are quite huge, sometimes eating into operators’ bottom line.

  • Commuters groan amid fuel scarcity in Aba

    Commuters groan amid fuel scarcity in Aba

    Fuel scarcity is taking its toll on commuters in Aba, the commercial hub of Aia State and the Southeast.

    Capitalising on the difficulties of finding the golden liquid, transporters have jerked up fares to the discomfort of their passengers.

    One of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s depots at Osisioma on the outskirts of the business city is yet to receive product, causing majority of the filling stations in the city to be closed. A few where the products are available sell at exorbitant prices.

    The Nation investigation reveals that most of the filling stations dispensed petrol at a pump price of between N110 and N120 while in the black market it sold for between N120 and N150, a situation that has affected cost of transportation in  most parts of Enyimba City.

    From Park to Osisioma which usually cost N70 now costs between N100 and N150. Park to No 1 Port Harcourt road rose from N30 to N50. Park to Ariaria initially was N50, but can take up to N150 or less; depending on the flow of traffic on the busy Faulks Road etc even as a trip from Aba to Umuahia the state capital also witnessed a sharp increase as transporters attribute the increase to high cost diesel and PMS.

    Some of the petroleum marketers who spoke anonymously debunked the insinuations that they were hoarding petroleum products, adding that they were selling the products above the official pump price to cover their expenses as they went out of their ways to source the products outside the southeast which they equally got higher than the usual official price.

    A cross section of respondents who spoke to our reporter over the issue in Aba said that the situation was becoming excruciating on them that the federal government needs to do all it can to address the situation and to also get the country’s refineries working to upmost capacity.

    They also expressed the fears that if nothing was done to ameliorate the situation, the prices of petroleum products could further rise beyond the current price which further ruin the mood of the festive period and also affect the price of commodities in the market beyond the affordability of the common man.

    The residents further called for the prompt supply of petroleum products to the Osisioma Depot as soon as possible in order to salvage the situation and feared that if the situation continues, it could further lead to having adverse effect on business and economic activities in the city and therefore plead federal government and the responsible bodies to put heads together and see how the situation can be nip in the bud and save the people from further agony.

     

  • Electricity consumers groan

    Electricity consumers groan

    •In spite of all the vaunted reforms, darkness and inefficiency assail the average Nigerian

    If there is any area where the Federal Government has consistently failed the nation, it is in the supply of electricity. To Nigerians, adults and children alike, darkness is the order of the day; it is what they all have grown up with. Indeed, electricity problem in Nigeria has gone beyond words and complaints.

    A major issue at stake now is the problem of consumers paying for electricity that is never supplied. We call this a cruel rip-off. A newspaper reported that electricity consumers in parts of Lagos and Ogun states, for example, have complained that the claim of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) that it had frozen tariffs for residential consumers for six months was “fraudulent and deceitful”.

    The consumers cried out amidst rising bills being distributed to them by the power distributing companies in spite of reduction in electricity supply that has constantly put many homes in darkness. Yet the revised multi-year tariff order 2.1 as approved by NERC came into force on January 1, 2015.

    A major highlight of this tariff order provided a six-month freeze on tariff increase for residential consumers (R2) who made up about 80 percent of the country’s electricity consumers. This means, as the Chairman of NERC, Dr. Sam Amadi, said, “the commission has not increased the tariff for residential consumers”. According to him, “while the scheduled increase will apply to other cases of consumers from January 1, 2015, it will not affect residential consumers until after June 2015”.

    However, Dr. Amadi’s statement has been debunked by consumers who saw it as deceitful. For example, the consumers in Lagos and Ogun states have claimed that they were served higher bills for January this year compared to what they got in December 2014. One consumer actually said that she was billed N 6,300 in January 2015 compared to N 4,200 she paid in December 2014. This has led to the ugly situation where aggrieved customers threatened to beat up one of the workers of the distribution company in charge of the area.

    It is unfortunate that NERC has no answers to the consumers’ complaints. It is also unfortunate that the NERC has not fulfilled its promise of frozen tariffs for residential consumers. Most unfortunate is the fact that there is no justification for the rise in tariff, especially when it is not based on an improvement in electricity supply. It is obvious that the new electricity companies have not gotten over their inherited challenges, especially with the problem of gas and other related issues.

    Moreover, the new companies appear to be following the greedy footpath of the old companies by dishing out indiscriminate and crazy bills as a way of making more money than they should get from consumers. This is where prepaid meters are necessary to curb the cheating of consumers who are deliberately billed for electricity they did not consume.

    But even more wicked is the unacceptable charge for consumers, irrespective of whether or not they use electricity for months! This is to say people should not be made to pay additional charge as “ground rent” other than the amount of electricity consumed, as it has been the ugly practice by the electricity companies. We are not happy that all this is going on in spite of the fact that the government keeps on giving the new companies money even after selling the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to them. We insist that NERC should ensure that Nigerians are not forced to pay for services not rendered to them; such an act is borne out of corrupt practices for which the nation has become notorious.

  • Manufacturers groan under shortage of gas

    Operators in the manufacturing and power sectors are currently groaning under the severe gas shortage and its impact on their production.

    A major cement manufacturer at the weekend hinted that the twin problems of pipeline vandalism and the maintenance work on some Chevron gas installations taking place at the same time are responsible for the disruption of gas supply to the cement plants and other manufacturing outfits.

    The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in the wake of the gas supply disruption attributed the development to pipeline vandalism. The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Andrew Yakubu, lamented that about N800 million had been spent on the fixing of the damaged pipelines and blamed it on alleged sabotage of some crucial pipelines, which he said eroded available gas supply to the power plants, leading to incessant blackout.

    To avoid the unpleasant situation, most Nigerians have resorted to generating their own electricity, using diesel, or petrol powered generators. This was attested to by the Global Business Intelligence, a research firm which estimated that Nigerians spent about N70.5 billion on electricity generation in 2011.

    Cement manufacturers said although they are trying to make up with Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) supplies from local refineries, the volume from local supplier is not enough to make up for the deficit and they are now resorting to importing LPFO and coal.

    A top official of Dangote Cement, the largest producer, who pleaded anonymity, said: “Yes, we are having problems with gas supply to our plants, and it is partially affecting our operations. As soon as the gas supply is restored, cement production will be back at full capacity and supply to the market will stabilise. In our plants for instance across the country, in the absence of gas, we consume up to 3.75 million litres of LPFO daily, which translates to an additional N0.5 billion per day increase in our production cost.

    “In the last two years, local manufacturers of cement have ramped up their capacities and have been producing enough cement to meet and surpass cement demand in the country. They have made the country not only self-sufficient in cement production, but also a net exporter.”

  • Travellers groan as youths block Onitsha/Owerri road

    Thousands of commuters were yesterday trapped on the busy Onitsha/Owerri Expressway when aggrieved youths from Amiri community, in Oru West Local Government Area of Imo State, protested alleged marginalisation of their area by the state government.

    The protesters, who dressed in war regalia and carried weapons, ignored the pleas of the travellers to open the road.

    The youths demanded the resignation of Governor Rochas Okorocha for allegedly failing to keep his promises to the community.

    A similar incident occurred on the same route last week when a neighbouring community – Awo-Omamma, in the same local government – barricaded the road during a protest on alleged infrastructure decay in the area.

    The protesters also ignored threats by security agents to open the road.

    They descended on adamant truck drivers who attempted to drive through the road block.

    Speaking with The Nation, one of the youths, who gave his name simply as Rocky, said the residents had endured what he called the antics of the state government for a long time while the community suffered under severe erosion.

    He said: “Our road has been washed away and the rains are gradually coming. We can hardly go to our villages because the roads are no longer accessible. So, we cannot take that anymore. Okorocha should come out here and award the construction of Amiri Road today or nothing.

    “The governor, in one of his visits to the community, during a church service, promised to award the road contract. But one year after, we have not seen anything or heard from him.”

    The leader of the youths, Mr. Charles Udoji, urged the governor to resign because of what he called his “promise and fail” style of governance.

    Udoji said: “We have suffered great neglect under the present administration. The only road leading to Amiri has been cut off by erosion and we can’t visit our village anymore. Okorocha should either award the road today or face more protests.”

    But Information Commissioner Chinedu Offor berated the protesters.

    The commissioner said the Okorocha administration has started several projects across the state.

    He added: “I doubt if the youths are from the community. That’s because there is no community in the state that does not have one or more projects that is either ongoing or has been completed. So, no one has any justifiable reason to protest. This administration has done more than any other in terms of infrastructure development.”

  • Residents groan under high rent

    ALMOST everything is expensive in Abuja, from foodstuff to accommodation. Despite this, people still flock to the city in search of greener pastures and the easy life, not deterred by the problems of accommodation, transportation and security risks.

    In 2006, the population of Abuja was about 800,000, but the 2012 consensus shows that the number of people living in Abuja is about 3 million.

    The huge influx of people into the city has led to the emergence of satellite towns such as Karu Urban Area, Suleja Urban Area, Gwagwalada, Kuje and others. These suburban areas which are mostly on the outskirts of town with their high population. But be it in the satellite towns or what the residents refer to as ‘Town,’ they are daily confronted with rising cost of accommodation .

    The costs of houses in these suburban areas, though cheaper than what you can get in the town, are still very high. For example, a self-contained apartment, which is just a room with an adjoining toilet and bathroom and maybe a kitchen, goes for N 200,000 in Lungu in Gwarimpa. The same type of accommodation at 69 Road, also in Gwarimpa, costs N500,000 with five occupants sharing one kitchen. In Maraba, such apartment goes for N200,000.

    Abuja residents have complained severally about how expensive these houses are especially those in the suburban region which are some distance from their offices or work places. A resident, Isaiah Bantu said: “When I think about the two hours journey I have to make from Kubwa everyday to Utako because of these narrow roads and hold-up, I almost give up. I really wish I could afford to stay in town, but I don’t have the millions needed. Even in Kubwa, I pay too much just for one-room apartment.”

    Another challenge faced by Abuja residents is the two years’ rent that landlords collect at a time. Ncheta Ilechukwu, an Abuja resident had this to say: “I pay N650,000 for a room and parlour apartment in Karu. Water doesn’t run in the taps; I have to buy that separately. Imagine that!  And to make matters worse, the landlord insists on collecting two years’ rent up front!”

    Clement Orji, a taxi driver who says he pays N250,000 yearly for a one-bedroom apartment in Nyanya suburb, complained bitterly about the area. According to him, the roads are bad and basic facilities such as light and water are hard to come by.

    One would wonder why, when the practice of collecting two years’s rent up front has been abolished in some cities, such still thrive in the area. Another challenge faced by the residents is that, after struggling to pay the rent what becomes the fate of a typical resident if the building is pulled down by the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) like the mass demolitions going on in Mpape, Abuja

    Apartments in places like Garki, Wuse, Maitama and Asokoro are far more expensive. A room and parlor in Garki for example goes for about N1.5million and the landlords usually insist on collecting two years’ rent. That automatically means you would need N3million naira to rent a room and parlour in Garki.

    Some would say that living in “Town” is not for everybody. It seems that we can comfortably conclude that ‘Town’ in this case is not just the urban areas of Abuja, but Abuja itself. The overall cost of living in Abuja is approximately three times the cost of living in most cities in Nigeria.