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Tag: Hurricane

  • A savage hurricane season with origins in West Africa: reflections on natural and man-made disasters

    A savage hurricane season with origins in West Africa: reflections on natural and man-made disasters

    On the very day this past week that Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had quite a struggle to keep my umbrella from being blown away by winds moving at 22 miles an hour as I made my way to a class I was going to teach. Luckily for me, it was a short distance that I had to go to get to the classroom in which the class was to be held. Nonetheless, I was drenched by the time that I got to the classroom, although not to the bare skin underneath my dripping-wet clothes.

    My students were already in the classroom, waiting for me. They said nothing when they saw me, but their looks of concern clearly expressed sympathy for their teacher’s rain-soaked condition, symbolized above everything else by the useless state of my umbrella, with its shredded nylon canopy on a collapsed, twisted and misshapen frame. In what I wanted to be both an acknowledgment of their sympathy and an admission that what we in Cambridge were experiencing that day was relatively very mild, I said to the students, “today, right now, things are worse, a thousand times worse, for the residents of Puerto Rico”. Then, of course, I went through the business of instruction in a session that went very well, hurricanes, storms and gale force winds momentarily forgotten. It was after the end of the class as I walked back to my office that I realized that what I had said to the students about things being far worse in Puerto Rico was deeply inflected by the fact that I am a Nigerian, an African. How so?

    As everyone knows, the likes of Hurricanes Harvey (Texas), Irma (Florida) and Maria (Puerto Rico; the U.S, Virgin Islands) with the terrible destructions they have wrought are virtually unexperienced and therefore unknown in our part of the world. True, we do have periodic coastal and inland floods that are very damaging in terms of lives lost and buildings and physical infrastructures destroyed, but nothing that we have ever experienced in these natural disasters remotely approaches what we saw these past few weeks in the wakes of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. In Ibadan, the occasional or periodic flooding of the Ogunpa Stream known as “Omiyale” (“Agbara wo sobu!) has been invested with mythic malevolence in local lore even though, mercifully, it typically claims lives countable in single digits, not in dozens and certainly not in hundreds or thousands.

    I am not sure about this, but not everyone, not too many people know that the hurricanes that batter and destroy human lives and habitations in the North Atlantic basins of mainland America and the Caribbean islands start as tropical cyclones in West Africa. I am not a meteorologist and neither am I an expert in climatology and oceanography, but from geography lessons in high school more than half a century ago, I remember the knowledge given to us that it is because all the land masses and the oceans of the world are connected by waves and currents that West Africa, our region of the planet, is the place from which tropical waves and cyclones begin and then move westward to the Americas and the Caribbean where they become hurricanes of dreaded impact. This does not mean that our part of the planet is the source, the “culprit” of the havoc wrought by hurricanes in the nations and cities of the North Atlantic and the Caribbean! Both beneficent and ill winds blow around and about and across all the regions of the earth. This is precisely what the term “natural disasters” connotes, as distinct from the term, man-made disasters. Natural disasters: the earth is old and “nature” had been there long before we arrived on the scene and in certain respects, it remains indifferent, if not actively hostile to our presence. Man-made disasters: knowingly and/or unknowingly, we make both the occurrence and the effects of natural disasters worse. The crisis, the dilemma that we face now is this: natural and man-made disasters are so inextricably intertwined now that we seem unable to muster both the moral energy and the collective political will to rise to the scale of the challenge, the crisis. This is the central idea that I wish to explore in this piece.

    Now if hurricanes (and earthquakes too) occur far less frequently in our part of the world than all the other hemispheres in the world, droughts and famines, with the unspeakable losses in human lives, livestock and farmlands that they cause, are by contrast more rampant in our region of the world. Since they are natural disasters, are we to blame for their occurrence? The Western world in particular but also most of the other regions of the world not only blame us for the natural disaster of drought, but they do so with mostly veiled but sometimes quite open condescension and even contempt. For quite often, behind the aid in money, food and technical support that they extend to us in times of drought and famine, behind the vocal and high-minded support of some of their artists, music superstars and humanitarian organizations and individuals, behind all of this is an Afro-pessimist paternalism that doubts whether we, Africans, will ever be able to master the technological, economic and political processes that would finally make the scourges of drought and famine in our continent rare or even manageable phenomena – as we have seen in many other parts of the world. If this is bad enough, the worst is the probability that deep down, our leaders are themselves Afro-pessimists who show in countless ways that we do not have it in ourselves and our traditions to rise to the challenges of droughts, famine and pandemic diseases in our continent. In saying this, I do not forget how in our country, we successfully rose to the challenge and the crisis of the Ebola plague, yes with support from the W.H.O. and other international and foreign donor organizations and volunteers, but primarily from our own initiatives.

    This point brings me to the most crucial of the observations and reflections that I am making in this essay. What is this? Well, think of it this way: Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have their origins in tropical waves and cyclones off the West African coast. Well, there is nothing new in this since experts have been in possession of the fact of the African genesis of North Atlantic and Caribbean hurricanes for a very long time, in fact for centuries now and at the very least from the mid-19th century when records began to be kept. Experts have known that it takes between two to three weeks for the tropical waves on the African coast to make it across the Atlantic to the North, the great majority of them in fact never making it that far. The few that do are easily and very clearly seen by satellite imaging and their probable paths are mapped and predicted, more and more with incredible accuracy. If this is the case, why do the hurricanes still catch populations and the authorities of the North Atlantic and the Caribbean off-guard?  Why do people continue to build and settle in places that are known to be hurricane-prone? Why do people who scoff at the ominous signs of climate change and the dangerous warming of the oceans and the resultant rise in sea levels fail to see the complicity of their “man-made disasters” with the natural disasters of these hurricanes?

    Readers of this piece who expect me to indict capitalist exploitation of the earth’s peoples and resources will, I give assurance, not be disappointed! But they might be surprised by my insistence that we do not face a unified exploitative capitalist order in the coalescence of man-made and natural disasters that is at the center of the discussion in this essay. In other words, the “capitalism” that is resistant to the science and the politics of climate change in North America is of a very different order from the “capitalism” that continuously de-industrializes Africa and subjects it endlessly and mercilessly to natural scourges and plagues. Expressed differently without over-simplifying the issue, here is the breakdown of the play of forces that I have in mind here. First: in the “North” of the post-industrial or indeed over-industrialized economies, the developers, the oil drillers and the manufacturers that make super profits from products and services that worsen the effects of climate change are successfully preventing action against themselves and their activities. Second: in the “South” (especially in Africa), levels and sums of investment in human and technological capital remain negligible while the social surplus is looted, wasted and squandered by the political and economic elites. In this overdetermined context, nothing is more unnatural than the “natural disasters” of droughts and famines that are, at this stage of overall capitalist development in the world at large, eminently manageable.

    I would like to conclude these reflections and observations on the grimness of a particular detail from the devastation visited on Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. The entirety of the national power grid of electricity supply on the island has been completely knocked out for a long time. The estimates run from four to six months of total darkness relieved only by power from generators fueled by oil and/or diesel. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But Puerto Rico is part of America, not an island off the West African coast. If Maria started out from West Africa, the infrastructure of power supply and distribution that it found and destroyed in Puerto Rico is not different from what it might have destroyed in West Africa had its path been inland, not outward and westward to the Americas. We all live on the same planet and have a common destiny.

    Two Haikus
    1.
    Harvey, Irma, Maria When you come this way again May unwelcome startle you into inclement impotence

    2.
    Whence cometh our salvation? Roused from ageless perplexity Nature picks itself up
    and turns itself inside out

    •Biodun Jeyifo
    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Nigeria’s homemade hurricane

    SIR: Three major flood disasters have so far affected us this year alone, one in  Lagos, another in Suleja, Niger State and the recent flood that swept across 24 communities in Benue State. Nature quite unfortunately can be most times unpredictable, but that’s also largely dependent on our attitude towards it. My visit to Suleja town in December 2016 really proved much point to me on how much the inhabitants of that place dishonour their environment by openly defecating and dumping of refuse, while filling drainage channels with nylon packs and cabbages.

    It’s not a lie that the most states in Nigeria do not even have close to sophisticated waste management plans or system for collecting and appropriately disposing refuse and for recycling. Many streets and communities across Nigeria’s 36 states do not have waste disposing tanks or bins neither have they witnessed the operation of waste collection agencies.  While Lagos with its LAWMA agency has over the years been toning its muscles in the area of waste management, the recent flood in some areas on the Lagos Island shows we still have a long way to go to adequately care for Mother Nature so that she can in turn care for us.

    Natural disasters although are often unfortunate events as their root cause and exact timing are difficult to capture, but in Nigeria, our collective handling and habits which takes our environment as a docile entity rather than an interacting being, has over the years brought us untold hardships and damages. You damage the dignity of the natural environment; it damages your hard earned fortunes In turn. The ever polluted streams and rivers of Niger Delta’s oil rich communities lie in wait there; the people’s means of livelihood in fishing and farming have been consistently dealt a blow and rendered irrelevant for the operations of oil producing multinational firms raking millions of dollars into our government’s coffers and making the government blind to the plight of the people

    Irrespective of what natural disaster rocks the USA, China and other advanced nations, their collective response and attitude of care towards their environment (which is visible in their beautiful and clean landscape) and their response to unfortunate natural disasters will continue to help them have upper hand in the transactions of societal and environmental interaction. The responsibility of caring and maintaining environmental decency is in our hands as Nigerians; it however needs a top – down approach to creating a sense and an attitude of environmental care and sanity, as political authority is needed for compliance in this journey. Nigeria needs to avert an avalanche of self-made disasters.

     

    • Bolaji Olaniba,

    Lokoja, Kogi State.

     

  • No Nigerian died in Texas hurricane – NIDO

    No Nigerian died in Texas hurricane – NIDO

    No Nigerian life is lost to the Hurricane Harvey-ravaged Texas as the disaster has claimed dozens of lives so far, the Nigerian in Diaspora Organization (NIDO) Americas, has said.

    Dr Akin Awofolaju, a NIDO official told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday that the organisation had reached out to Nigerians in the area.

    NAN reports that the devastating hurricane made landfall in the state a week ago and has been blamed for at least 47 deaths.

    No fewer than 43,000 people are currently housed in shelters while 156,000 homes are reportedly affected.

    “So far, we don’t have any Nigerian who has lost his or her life in the hurricane. We’ve reached out to them and they are safe.

    “We’ve spoken and have been speaking with Nigerians there; we have been reaching out to them and so far, no death has been recorded among Nigerians,” he said.

    NAN gathered that many Nigerians in Texas whose areas are not affected by the hurricane are accommodating Nigerians that are affected, pending when the floods recede and government relief assistance.

    Awofolaju noted that for more than three months, relevant authorities have been telling people to evacuate, saying many people actually evacuated.

    “Many people listened and heeded the warnings; those who defied the warnings are most affected.

    “But one good thing about the U.S. is that insurance will cover most of the damages,” he said.

    NAN reports that President Donald Trump on Saturday returned to Houston in company of First Lady Melania, praising the relief response on his second visit to Texas.

    The president also declared Sunday a “National Day of Prayer” for victims of Hurricane Harvey.

    Trump had asked Congress for 7.9 billion dollars as an initial payment to help with recovery efforts following the flooding in both Texas and Louisiana. (NAN)

  • Trump pledges $1m of his personal money to Harvey relief

    Trump pledges $1m of his personal money to Harvey relief

    American President Donald Trump will pledge one million dollars of his own money to relief efforts for Hurricane Harvey, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Thursday.

    “I am happy to tell you that he (Trump) would like to join in the efforts that a lot of the people that we have seen across this country do.

    “He is pledging one million dollars of personal money to the fund,” Sanders told reporters at a White House briefing.

    More than 4,500 people and 113 pets stranded by Hurricane Harvey have been rescued by the U.S. special flood response teams this week, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) said.

    The Coast Guard said in a statement issued on Thursday that it had deployed assets and resources from across the country to create a sustainable response force.

    “Currently, there are 33 Coast Guard helicopters and nine Coast Guard Flood Punt Teams, with 12 shallow-draft vessels capable of operating in flooded urban areas, which helped in rescuing the 4,500 who were in peril.

    “On Wednesday alone, Punt Teams took more than 940 people in the Houston, Texas area to safety,’’ it said.

    SERVPRO a cleanup and restoration works franchiser in based in the U.S. and Canada had mobilised some 9,000 personnel from across the U.S. to respond to the aftermath of the tropical cyclone Harvey.

    Bryan Stone, the company’s Director for Northwest Texas, East Texas, South Texas and Louisiana said that SERVPRO would mobilise or employ approximately 8,000 to 9,000 personnel throughout this event.

    “Often, we are even able to utilise local residents who are unable to work due to the closing of their employer’s business,” Stone said.

    “Over 250 SERVPRO franchises were currently responding to the emergencies in the area with an expectation of approximately 400 or more joining the effort in the days to come.

    “Each franchise will bring their personnel, equipment and other necessary resources to handle their work loads.

    “In addition, SERVPRO Industries is providing dozens of 18-wheelers of drying equipment, generators and other critical supplies to help with the cleanup,” Stone said.

    He said that the company had to deal with all types of jobs when it came to an event like that of the Hurricane Harvey.

    Stone said that many roadways in the affected areas were still flooded and areas were inaccessible.

    Hurricane Harvey descended on Texas on Saturday and was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm by the U.S. National Hurricane Centre that same day.

    The storm affected mainly south-eastern Texas, including the city of Houston, in addition to south-western Louisiana. Harvey is the largest storm to have hit the U.S. since the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

  • Hurricane Muhammed

    It may not be an extravagant exaggeration to paint General Murtala Muhammed as a hurricane. His brief rule as a military head of state in the 1970s had the intensity of a hurricane. So intense was his touch, and so consequential, that the effects and after-effects endure as the country remembers his assassination 40 years ago on February 13, 1976.

    Muhammed was 37 when he died after being shot by coupists who took advantage of his fatalism. He was under-protected on the road when his killers struck. The black Mercedes Benz saloon car in which he was shot on his way to work in Lagos lies in a museum with all the blood stains of the bloodshed. Muhammed’s Aide-De-Camp (ADC), Lieutenant Akintunde Akinsehinwa, was in the car with him and was also killed. The historically significant car is a grim signification of times when the gun was the governor.

    It is a striking irony that a military ruler could have been so carefree concerning his personal security that only a pistol carried by his orderly, who was also in the car, suggested protection concerns. It is curious that Muhammed apparently underestimated his vulnerability, despite his leadership style that attracted hostility from enemies of his messianic zeal and the change he symbolised.

    The failure of the coup attempt led by Lt. Col Buka Suka Dimka, and   Muhammed’s succession by the thenChief of Staff, Supreme HQ, Olusegun Obasanjo, trigger reflections on what might have been and what might not have been.

    What if the coup attempt had succeeded? What if someone else, not Obasanjo, had succeeded Muhammed? What if Obasanjo did not have greatness thrust upon him at that critical juncture?  It may be said that the country’s political trajectory since Muhammed’s assassination cannot be divorced from his assassination.

    After the hurricane, there is The Hurricane, a new book on Muhammed by Taiwo Ogundipe, which will be presented on February 20 at the Coronation Hall, Government House, Kano. The book launch is part of activities organised by the Kano State government to mark the 40th anniversary of Muhammed’s assassination.

    The author said in a statement: ”To date, most of the books that have been written by some of the major participant-observers on the military’s involvement in Nigeria’s governance have only made passing references to Murtala. A number of books, which have been specifically written on his tenure, focus largely on his administrative policies and pronouncements. None so far has given a detailed human-angle account of his life and death.”

    Ogundipe described his book as “a product of extensive research and interviews.” He added: “This book traces the roots of the General and his progenitors. It also focuses on his birth, his growing up years, his schooling days, his life as a young man, his military training and career. The book also highlights his marriage and family life, his performance as a soldier, his involvement in the post-independence crisis that engulfed the nation, his emergence as a national leader, his role as head of state, his tragic death and finally the after-effects.”

    According to the publisher, Topseal Communications, “The Hurricane, after a thorough assessment, secured the official approval of the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council of the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja, and has been certified suitable for use in  Nigerian educational institutions and recommended for the general public.”

    It is a testimony to the weight of Ogundipe’s book that no less a person than ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote the foreword. This is the same man that succeeded Muhammed and realised his plan for civilian rule by handing power over to Shehu Shagari on October 1, 1979. This is the same man that sensationally returned to power as an elected president in 1999 and completed two terms.

    Obasanjo said: “General Muhammed may have been in power for only six months, before he was tragically assassinated, but those are six months that are indelibly embossed on records of modern Nigeria. For they were six months when Nigeria intensely experienced leadership that was focused, dedicated, dynamic and selfless. Most importantly, those six months provided the launching pad for the most positive developments in leadership orientation in this country, including the handover of power to the elected government in 1979.”

    Obasanjo continued: “The Hurricane has effectively captured the historical perspectives of the work of the General, depicting his effort to bring about discipline and sanitisation of the military and the Nigerian civil society. Given the present moral condition in Nigeria, where corruption is so pervasive, this book is a refreshing opportunity for reflections on the past…and the man who has since come to symbolise the crusade for the good of our country.”

    The crusade continues. After the hurricane, there is The Hurricane.

  • Hurricane Buhari

    It is quite some time since last we had a real presidential time. And, never had we experienced a contest where the incumbent holds the short end of the stick. But, truth is told, the election this year is for General Muhammadu Buhari to lose. All the odds are against incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. All attempts to manipulate the stakes for him have failed. First, only the President and his men believe he has posted stellar performance since he mounted the saddle in February 2010. Second, the bid to use religion to divide the electorate in order to have a fair share of the votes has failed. Third, the blows thrown at General Buhari were so feeble that they could not weaken him. It seems the time has come for the opposition to take charge.

    All over the North-east, West, and Central, it is Sai Buhari. In the West, the outlook has never been better for the North West and South West to act in concert. Only in the South South and South East does the incumbent stand a good chance of having the larger percentage of the votes. And, at that, the margin is likely to be narrow.

    In an attempt to dodge issues, the President’s campaign team has been making desperate efforts to discredit the All Progressives Congress’s presidential candidate. He was said to be an illiterate who failed the constitutional requirement of a minimum of School Certificate. This would have been laughable is it is not a sad commentary on the quality of those who have been running the affairs of the country. Why would anyone, however desperate, suggest that a General of the Nigerian Army is an illiterate? Didn’t he attend courses at military academies at home and abroad? How did he come? The man was Minister of Petroleum Resources, he was a military Head of State and, after retirement, he was found so useful that he was drawn out to manage a super infrastructure intervention agency. Yet, PDP men say he is an illiterate who is not qualified to direct national affairs.

    Then, he was also depicted as a haggled old man who is already going senile. The PDP team said Buhari could not remember his phone number. Yet, the people saw him campaign from town to town with the agility of a young man. Pray, where was Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode in the Second Republic when the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe solicited votes to occupy the highest office in the land? Were they rejected at the poll on account of their ages? In the Eastern states, Zik swept the polls in 1979 at 75; in the Western States, Awo performed the magic of raking up all the votes. Were they considered too old then?

    Then, Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose led the battle from a different flank. As he alone could, Fayose likened voting for Buhari to voting for death. He suggested that a President Buhari would not last the distance. Because any leader from the North West is destined to die in office. He was complemented by the Fani-kayode crowd who flew the kite that the 72-year old had suddenly taken ill and flown out for medical care. Haba!

    All the tricks have failed. Buhari is ahead. This probably led the desperate and pathetic National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, to start the campaign for poll shift on the ground that INEC had failed to produce the Permanent Voter Cards for all potential voters. True, there is no magic by which the electoral commission could achieve the impossible feat. This is why I do not agree with the APC that only the PVC be used for the elections. Neither do I think the deployment of card readers is the only way to secure the sanctity of the poll. At this juncture, I think it is more desirable that the election date be preserved than insisting on technical support. It is difficult to see the point in using card readers for the first time for a presidential election. It has never den tested, and if we go by the reputation of INEC at bungling such things, we should just expect that card readers may achieve the opposite of the intended. This is a country where the ATM fails at random.

    The only means of ensuring that all registered voters cast their ballots is ensuring that the Temporary Voter Card be used for this election. The sanctity of votes does not depend on technology, but fidelity of men. Whether card readers are used or not if INEC men choose to pervert the course of justice, they would.

    Buhari can now only be stopped by divine arrangement. It does not depend on the number of “men of God” who, like Balaam have been procured to railroad their members to impede the move of the man appointed for this moment. Use of PVCs as tickets to enter sanctuaries would not help anyone’s cause. At best, the “prophets”, are projecting themselves like Herod, attempting to share the glory of the Almighty.

    Buhari is now a hurricane, whoever or whatever is deposited to impede his movement to the Aso Villa would be swept away. As Balaam, who had been blinded by filthy lucre said in his sober moment, no one can curse whoever is not cursed by the Almighty. Those who claim to be speaking the mind of the Most High while being propelled by the flesh can only fail and fall. After all, one other prominent member of that clan who now campaigns for extension of term for Jonathan fell flat in 1999 when he made a false prophecy.

    Whatever devices men may come up with, God remains on the throne. May His Will be done.

  • Surviving an emotional hurricane

    HURRICANES are large spiralling storms that can pack wind speed of over 160 miles an hour and unleash more than 2.4 trillion gallons of rain a day. Damage is done via heavy rains, strong winds and heavy waves to building, trees and cars. Here, tales of destruction abound and it can be likened to what you experience in a romantic experience that has turned deadly.

    In an emotional hurricane, hearts would be ravaged, dreams torn to shreds and deep hatred like the waves blow endlessly around. Even when you wish and wish that you could come to a middle way, it does not work out because the wind of emotional change is in charge.

    Sometimes, when love gets sour it is better to move on thinking of something new, something that would give you a breath of fresh air. There is certainly no point crying over spilt milk. Unfortunately for Lauretta, she didn’t feel this way, when she realised that she had been taken for a love ride by the guy who made her tipsy for about two years.

    In the process, she made a number of core love investments and her dream was to reap great emotional dividends in the process. She wasn’t alone and friends and a number of close allies who monitored this emotional deal waited patiently for positive outcome. “When things started to go wrong, I just didn’t know what to do. We worked in the same office and for the first time I realised that office romance was not a great idea after all.

    “Everyone followed the emotional war with great passion. They used every opportunity to tell me why I must fight him to a standstill. Foolishly, I listened to them and the battle line was drawn. We fought each other to a standstill and when he just could not take it anymore, he left. Even though I was still at work, my mind was not at work and my life was in a real mess.”

    Poor gal! Where is she going to start from now? How was she going to get back on track again? Life without her dearest was empty but somehow there was nothing she could do about it. Just when she thought she had found all she wanted, it vanished into thin air and she was stranded once more.

    Well, it wasn’t really her fault, neither was it his too. But for the two lovebirds, it was not destined to work. The love strings was cut midway and before they could pick the emotional strings together the affectionate metre stopped suddenly.

    It is usually important to understand the personality that you are dealing with. Sometimes it may just not be what you think it is. Sometimes, a man will often need to take some time to himself even when he’s crazy about a woman – and especially after a period of intense intimacy.

    Also it may just be that all he wanted was a fling; he never really had “long-term” in mind. Poor gal! Stupidly she’s far away in fantasy Island, lost to her emotions while the guy she has fallen hopelessly and helplessly in love with is busy plotting an emotional coup.

    So what could have gone wrong? You wonder. Different reasons and it may not necessarily be because he’s not in the right place in his life right now for a serious relationship. For a lot of guys, it may just be that he isn’t ready or capable of real intimacy.

    If a man suddenly pulls back and appears less interested in you, so many things will run through your mind as to why? Then what ends up happening is that you become so worried about what that why might be that you start acting differently toward him.

    But there’s a way to nip this in the bud. First, you need to find out the real reason why a man is acting this way, and this will actually deepen your connection with him.

    Instead of feeling powerless and wondering what he’ll do next or whether you’ve scared him away, you’ll feel grounded and know what to do. And you’ll be able to clearly see whether he’s right for you and worth sticking it out with. It’s going to make you the chooser in your relationship, rather than the other way around.

    Is it just a fantasy that a man will, of his own accord, decide that he can’t live without you and that he’s willing to give up his single days for you?

    An emotional hurricane, therefore, can be really devastating for many. All the emotions that you had planted in the midst of thorns would be pulled out, blown away with the winds and your heart would be in pieces. It is actually the worst scenario that you can imagine and most times chances of survival are usually very slim.

    Conversely, you have an ideal scenario, the type you read about in fairy tales about a happy ending and living together forever. Desperately, many, therefore, try to pull emotional square pegs into round hole thinking it would work if only they put in more effort.

    Yet, they never really seem to go too far. Nearly, more often than not, does not kill a love bird after all. The big question on the lips of many is why do men often display so much resistance when it’s time to get serious?

    Flirting can be done in a way that triggers a man’s attraction and feels very natural to him… or it can be forced and make a man feel very uncomfortable. If flirting doesn’t get his attention, then it may just destroy everything. So you need to distinguish and understand the “channels” of flirting that you can use in a way that feels natural to you.

  • ‘Nigeria is prone to severe hurricane’

    A Consultant Meteorologist, Mr. Idowu Adebayo, said Nigeria is prone to severe hurricane, typical of that being experienced in parts of America, Europe and the Caribbean.

    Adebayo said this in a chat with the News Agency of Nigerian in Lokoja.

    He said the evidence of climate change in different forms like the recent flood disasters was enough indication that Nigerian was more prone to severe storms.

    It would be recalled that several states were devastated by flood, killing many people, destroying property and submerging several houses and farmlands.

    The meteorologist is an expert who has long years of collaboration with the United Nation International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in Geneva.

    He told NAN that many of the storms, being experienced in America and Europe, actually originated from the West and Central Africa.

    “Storms from West and Central African regions move systematically with different intensities into the Atlantic and across the East Coast of America and the Caribbean,’’ he said.

    Adebayo said that the Hurricane Katrina and Sandy Storm, which recently swept across the America, had not been scientifically established to have originated from the West and Central Africa.

    He said that Nigeria had been experiencing hurricanes but that the intensity only became noticeable on July 31, 2000.

    “That was when a severe hurricane swept through the country, causing substantial damage to farms and the environment and without hitting the cities.’’

    Adebayo, who was shortlisted for the UN SASAKAWA Award in 2011, said that severe storms had since been passing through Nigeria without attention paid to them by the government.

     

  • Where Hurricane Sandy still hurts

    Where Hurricane Sandy still hurts

    For all the efforts of federal, state and local officials to help people after Hurricane Sandy, unacceptable pockets of suffering remain. Ten days after the hurricane struck, thousands of people in New York City’s public housing are still without heat, water, electricity or food. Many people needed assistance after the storm, but the most vulnerable of the city’s inhabitants seem to be among the last in line to get it.

    Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration estimated that Sandy had initially left more than 800,000 city customers without power, including many people in public housing. Many have since had their power and heat restored. Yet Steven Banks of the Legal Aid Society estimated on Thursday that more than 15,000 units of public housing closest to the city’s shoreline — mostly in the Rockaways, Coney Island and Red Hook — were still without heat and hot water or electricity.

    “We’re into the second week of this,” he said, “and there is no real urgency to get it fixed. …No can-do New York attitude here.”

    More than 400 buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority were affected by the storm. Mr. Bloomberg said Thursday that 70 percent of these buildings now have heat and hot water and 82 percent have electricity. But that leaves 120 buildings and the people who live in them without heat or hot water and 72 buildings and their residents without electricity.

    Whatever the precise numbers, by any accounting, life for these people is grim. On Wednesday afternoon, in the Far Rockaways, hundreds lined up for as much as three hours in the cold to get hot food promised by a makeshift delegation of volunteers. The multiple government agencies promising help were nowhere to be seen.

    In a public housing building in Red Hook, residents received official notices warning that “Since Hurricane Sandy, the electricity and water will be out indefinitely.” Meanwhile, Mr. Bloomberg has been urging older residents and other vulnerable citizens to “go someplace warm,” like shelters.

    On Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg expressed the hope that private contractors would be able to restore electricity by the weekend and heat “sometime early next week” to affected buildings. This is hardly comforting news to people huddled in blankets as temperatures drop. There seems to be no clear answer for why it has taken so long to send out temporary generators and boilers to help these residents.

    City Hall leaders argue that restoring power is a process that is more complicated than simply bringing in generators, especially in buildings where electrical systems have been badly compromised. They promise to dispatch additional workers to public housing and a phased-in schedule to bring more power and heat each day to devastated areas like the Rockaways. To us, that sounds late and insufficient. Mr. Bloomberg needs to redouble his efforts to help those most in need.

    – New York Times

  • Hurricane Sandy

    Hurricane Sandy

    •Another opportunity for Nigeria to learn useful lessons on how to tackle emergencies

     

    Hurricane Sandy. That was one hurricane Americans would not forget in a hurry. Of course, it was not the first hurricane to hit the United States, but it was one with a difference, considering its magnitude and the catastrophic effects it left in its trail. The hurricane affected at least 24 states, from Florida to Maine and west to Michigan and Wisconsin, with particularly severe damage in New Jersey and New York. Streets, tunnels and subway lines were flooded when its storm surge hit New York City on October 29, with resultant effect of millions of Americans left without power supply.

    Naturally, businesses, schools, roads and bridges were closed; and more than 13,000 airline flights were cancelled. No fewer than 106 persons have died from storm-related catastrophes.

    Coming not just in an election year, but only a few days to the polls, the hurricane came too close for comfort. And quite expectedly, it has had various effects in the US, particularly on the November 6 election. One thing cannot be denied though; and that was the fact that the hurricane did not take Americans unawares. It was, like other predictable natural disasters, foretold long before its arrival. And there was more than enough notice to Americans on its likely paths, on what to expect and what to do. Even President Barack Obama demonstrated the leadership expected of him in such a situation. He rose to the occasion, sleeping ‘0’nights’ to paraphrase Shakespeare, prompting Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to praise him repeatedly and effusively, for leading the federal government’s response to the storm. This was aside Obama’s visits to the affected areas and the empathy he demonstrated towards the victims.

    These are the essential qualities lacking in our own leaders and institutions. The biblical assurance that God will not tempt Christians beyond their capacities strictly adheres, at least to Nigeria. If Nature had not been as benevolent as not to make us experience some of these natural disasters as frequently as some of these advanced countries, no one can say with certainty what our fate as a nation would be by now.

    There is a huge gap between us and the United States and other advanced countries. And one of the defining features of this is that they have infrastructure for virtually everything and they all work efficiently and almost independently of the American government. It is the infrastructure that enables them to anticipate such disasters and plan because, if you do not expect, you cannot prepare. The Americans knew the geography of the hurricane, they prepared full kitchens, medical and other emergencies, so, they already had a head start.

    Here, in the best of times, all Nigerians are told is that they should evacuate their homes and other routes of floods or other mishaps but they are not provided alternative shelters where people without such can take refuge. The agencies responsible for monitoring and alerting us to the possibility of natural and other disasters, as well as those expected to cater to the needs of victims after the disasters are ill-funded, ill-equipped and their staff ill-motivated. Aside all these, corruption has eaten deep into their fabric like the entire Nigerian society. The ecological funds set aside to ameliorate the sufferings of victims of disasters and provide succour generally to them have been converted to freebies for which no accounts are rendered.

    We cannot keep doing the same thing the same way and expect different results. We do not pray for any disaster, natural or human. But the fact is they cannot always be wished away. What is important is for the country to learn the useful lessons in the anticipation and management of the disasters now that it still matters. We should be tired of being caught unawares all the time or having to beg multinationals to come to our aid when disasters strike.