WE STILL CAN'T GET OVER HOW MUCH WEIGHT JENNIFER HUDSON LOST . . . SHE WENT FROM A SIZE 14 TO A SIZE 4 IN 6 MONTHS!!!(BEFORE AND AFTER PICS INSIDE)

UN's Ban Ki-Moon calls Aral Sea 'shocking disaster'

NUKUS, Uzbekistan – The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet's most shocking environmental disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.

Once the world's fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.

The shrunken sea has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea's evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.

Ban toured the sea by helicopter as part of a visit to the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia. His trip included a touchdown in Muynak, Uzbekistan, a town once on the shore where a pier stretches eerily over gray desert and camels stand near the hulks of stranded ships.

"On the pier, I wasn't seeing anything, I could see only a graveyard of ships," Ban told reporters after arriving in Nukus, the nearest sizable city and capital of the autonomous Karakalpak region.

"It is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked," he said.

The Aral Sea catastrophe is one of Ban's top concerns on his six-day trip through the region and he is calling on the countries' leaders to set aside rivalries to cooperate on repairing some of the damage.

"I urge all the leaders ... to sit down together and try to find the solutions," he said, promising United Nations support.

However, cooperation is hampered by disagreements over who has rights to scarce water and how it should be used.

In a presentation to Ban before his flyover, Uzbek officials complained that dam projects in Tajikistan will severely reduce the amount of water flowing into Uzbekistan. Impoverished Tajikistan sees the hydroelectric projects as potential key revenue earners.

Competition for water could become increasingly heated as global warming and rising populations further reduce the amount of water available per capita.

Water problems also could brew further dissatisfaction among civilians already troubled by poverty and repressive governments; some observers fear that could feed growing Islamist sentiment in the region.

Ban also is taking on the region's frequently poor human rights conditions.

That is likely to be an especially tense issue when he meets Monday with Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who has led the country since the 1991 Soviet collapse and imposed severe pressure on opposition and civil rights activists.

The meeting comes less than two weeks after the U.N. Human Rights Committee issued a report criticizing Uzbekistan, including calling for fuller investigation of the brutal suppression of a 2005 uprising in the city of Andijan. Opposition and rights groups claim that hundreds were killed, but authorities insist the reports are exaggerated and angrily reject any criticism.

It was just like any other weekend at Zango, a suburb in Ilorin Kwara State, where Mrs Iyabode Olorunnisola, a renowned broadcaster at the NTA, Ilorin, lives.

Iyabo, as fondly called by her colleagues, is seven months pregnant and was just seeing off a church member- a friend and a nurse who visited her to the main road when it happened.

As Iyabo told Saturday Vanguard, the incident was an admixture of a miracle and reality. It sounds like James Bond films-touchy, gripping, patently emotional. The NTA reporter wants the story told so that mothers all over the world can learn to care for their children by giving them closer attention, “Nothing is too much for them because the children are our tomorrow”, she enthused

“I was inside the living room on the faithful day around 5pm or thereabout, with my nurse friend who had earlier called me that she was paying me a visit. We were actually discussing about my state, church matters and other related issues when I overheard my house maid, Aminat,” shouting at my four years old daughter to stay away from the well.

“Some minutes later, my guest left and I had to see her off to the main road, just a stone throw to our residence to board a taxi. She actually asked me to

PHOTO:Mother & Daughter before Incident

go back home because of my condition because I wanted to wait till she

boarded a taxi. To my dismay, when I got home, Aminat was just pointing at the well, shaking, and crying that my daughter, Bola had fallen into the well. I couldn’t believe it. I peeped into the well and I found my daughter gasping for breath inside the well.”

“Bola, since we gave birth to her, has been a very active baby .There was a day she went to visit my mother. While playing running around, she fell into a hot coal pot, and came out with burns all over her body. The scars are still there till today. She was said to be doing this ’’Boju-Boju’’, child play whereby children will cover their face and be running around, hide and seek games. Since her elderly ones were not at home, my daughter covered her face with a bucket running around the compound. I just wonder. she didn’t know the time she got to the brink of the well, and somersaulted inside. My brother, I couldn’t control myself seeing my daughter dying inside the well as she was gasping for breadth. Watching the pains she was going through was too much for me. Honestly, I didn’t know the time I jumped inside the well.”

“You could have died, not only with the baby but also with Bola you wanted to rescue,” she was told.

“May you never be in such situation. No mother would watch her child dying and would be thinking the way you are thinking. At that time, the fear of death didn’t come to my mind. All I wanted was to rescue my daughter with all my life. Any good mother will tell you this. So, I jumped into the well and with my seven months old pregnancy, I landed on Bola’s head inside the well, and together we went down, down at the bottom of the well.You know she summersaulted with the plastic bucket she was playing with, into the well.

That bucket, by divine arrangement, saved her skull from hitting the brick while she fell into the well. You know, as a journalist, you are supposed to know basic things about everything. So, in the process of my covering various assignments, I have heard a lot about one or two therapies about swimming. My brother, those things, I didn’t know when they came to my mind. I didn’t also know where the strength came from. Down, under the

water, I used my two legs already swollen up even before I jumped into the well, to bring Bola up to the water level, using my back and the two elbows to climb up the well. The clothes I had on was torn to shreds in the process, and there were bruises all over my back and elbow as a result of the injuries I sustained while bringing her up to the water level.

“While both of us were at the water level, I balanced myself with her on my two knees. Bola was already gone. So I started beating her, all over her body, slapping her mouth, and blowing air into her mouth, nose and ear. I did that intermittently with all the strength I had and slapped her severally. Honestly, I didn’t know where all those therapies came from but I must have learnt them from somewhere, sometimes.

“About 15 minutes later, my daughter started making sounds. So, I intensified the therapies. Eventually, she shouted aloud and it was then I knew where I was.At that point, I was now left with the problem of how two of us will get out of the well. I know there is God; that He exists. But this experience further strengthened my belief that there is God. If not God, the three of us would have possibly died inside the well because I didn’t mind. The agony was too much for me to bear.

“By now, people had already gathered at the mouth of the well. My friend who was waiting for taxi was called by my house girl, who in turn called two young boys walking away to come and rescue us from the well. They looked for ladder but the ladder couldn’t enter the well because of the position of two of us. By now, I didn’t have any strength in me again. So, I couldn’t climb up, talk less of coming up with my daughter. So, it was a big task, as frantic efforts were being made to bring us out of the well. Eventually, the ladder was suspended halfway and my daughter who by now had been terribly weak, struggled to climb out through the encouragements of the sympathizers.

“It was two hefty men that came into the well to bring me out. I thank God Almighty for his mercies! Immediately, I asked them to take us to our hospital. By now, it was going to around 6.30-7pm. All this while, my husband didn’t know anything. He was at work in his office. When he got home, he saw traces of slippers flung around, and everywhere looked much unkempt. He was actually scolding my house girl to tidy up the compound before my arrival.PHOTO:THE ILL FATED WELL

Could you believe that my house girl didn’t tell my husband what happened until I phoned him around 8pm that he should come and meet us at the hospital. We were there for two weeks. To the glory of the Almighty God, my pregnancy was certified okay, same with my health and that of my daughter. We later went to church for a thanksgiving.

“It’s a lesson to all mothers. We should give closer attention to our children, and be prayerful too. No matter what, I always have time for closer attention for my children. For instance, I always find time to take my children to and from school everyday, and when I know it’s not possible, I make good arrangement for them to stay with somebody who will look after them till I return.

I was dismayed when I read that Nigeria is offering to lease farmland to Gulf countries seeking food security and will allow investors to export all of their produce. Gulf Arab countries reliant on food imports have intensified efforts over the last year to buy land in developing nations ranging from Pakistan to the Sudan and Ethiopia.

"Nigeria has the terrain to provide 100 percent of the Gulf's food needs," Enbong Jimie Idiong, chief executive of Global Corp Ltd, told Reuters in an interview.

In what the Financial Times, has termed “rapacious”, rich nations are trotting the globe buying up the natural resources of poor countries. Foreign investors have acquired some 15-20 million hectares of farmland in poorer countries since 2006, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

There are more than 100 similar land-grabs globally, since September 2008, where huge tracts of farmland are bought up by wealthy countries as well international corporations.

The Gulf States are in the lead in this new investment. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,Oman, Qatar, controlling between them 45% of the world’s oil, are snatching AGRICULTURAL LAND in Egypt, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Zambia, Uganda, but also in Cambodia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia.

South Korea has grabbed a staggering 960,000 hectares in Sudan, the largest country in Africa, where at least 6 other rich countries are said to have secured large land-holding – and precisely where the local population are among the hungriest and least secure in the world.

The Saudis are negotiating 500,000 hectares (not acres) in Tanzania. Companies for the United Arab Emirates have snapped up 324,000 hectares inPakistan. Highly populated countries like China, South Korea and India have acquired swathes of African farmland to produce food for export.

India recently lowered tariffs for Ethiopian commodities that could enter India after the Indian government lent money to 80 Indian companies to buy 350,000 hectares of farmland in Africa, particularly huge tracts in Kenya, Mozambique and Ethiopia.

Mr Philippe Heilberg, a US businessman, has laid claim to 4,000 sq km of fertile territory in a deal with the family of a notorious warlord in south Sudan where Land is not in short supply.

More than a century ago, Cecil Rhodes extracted mineral rights from King Lobengula of the Ndebele and used these to push the frontiers of theBritish Empire beyond the Limpopo River. Some 120 years later, Zimbabwe is still struggling to overcome a legacy of unequal land distribution.

Mr Heilberg, a former Wall Street banker may be no Rhodes – his recent forays into Africa have yet to bear much fruit and include an acrimonious dispute over claims to an oil concession in south Sudan.

His latest venture does, though, have a decidedly 19th-century flavour to it. With the Arabs, UAE and China, he is buying up huge tracts of land in Sudan while the Sudanese are foolishly fighting over Darfur and now selling off their lands in addition.

The European Union would soon cut off the unsustainable farm subsidies. President Barack Obama also proposes to cut off massive funding to unsustainable subsidies to American farmers.

The result would be a huge demand for foodstuff in the future. The Sudanese, Nigerians and other poor countries that theink they make wise investments today by mortgaging their farmlands would quickly realise that they have short-changed themselves.

They would simply discover that a God-given resource that would constitute a strong bargaining chip has been taken out of their hands of forever.

What is Nigeria’s justification for selling their birthrights for a pot of porridge?

Nigeria has around 71.2 million hectares of farmland, of which less that 50 percent is being used, according to data from Global Corp Ltd.

"We need investment to fully utilize this land and we will allow the investors to export back 100 percent of the crop and this will create employment opportunities for people in Nigeria," said Idiong, a consultant with Global Corp.

The land could be leased for up to 30 to 40 years at a cost of around $10,000 per hectare for that period, he said..

"Because of the large size of land we can offer investors as much as they want, and there is no particular kind of crop that can't be grown in Nigeria."

But writing on ‘Re-Colonization of Africa through Buying Agricultural Land: Wealthy Nations and Their Multinationals on the Rampage’, Akinyi Princess of K’Orinda-Yimbo wrote:

“Africans are being colonised again and this time not with the power of weapons but through Africans themselves selling their continent willingly. The 99- and 999-year lease – a remnant of colonialists – surely cannot fool anybody. This is equivalent to a full century and/or full millennium which translates into three and a half to thirty-four consecutive generations of Africans”.

He continued: “Africans are selling the one natural resource they can’t afford to sell – their land. Especially arable land... The new colonialism is vast in Africa, with the buyers being wealthy countries unable to grow their own food. The Arabs are back fleeing their barren sands to turn Africa into their granary like they did one and a half millennia ago (in Egypt at the time).”

In the upcoming decades, several global developments will create new challenges for mankind. We will be confronted with problems and obstacles such as climate change, population growth beyond earth's capacity, and an increase in demand for energy and water caused by a striving for prosperity and expansion.

Africans should start thinking of themselves as worthwhile human beings too, plan for tomorrow and join forces to keep what is theirs theirs.

"Otherwise Africans might as well follow the butcher meekly to the slaughter house because that’s where they’re going to end up – in “native reserves” dying off as a people until the few Africans left are put in museums like they were once the main attraction in circuses all over the West in the 18th through early 20th centuries".

Daniel Elombah

A notorious South African white supremacist leader was killed Saturday by his employees, police said, in an apparent dispute over wages.

Eugene Terreblanche, 69, was the leader of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB).

He was bludgeoned and stabbed to death on his farm with clubs and a machete, police said. Two of his farm workers ages 21 and 16 turned themselves in to authorities in connection with the killing.

The suspects will appear in court Tuesday, police said.

The AWB urged its members and supporters to be calm as they mourn their leader.

South African President Jacob Zuma also appealed for calm after news of the killing broke, according to the country’s national news agency, SAPA.

Terreblanche’s death comes amid a time of racial polarization in the country. A South African court last month banned the playing of a political song called “Kill the Boer,” most recently sung by radical youth leader Julius Malema. The apartheid-era song’s lyrics translate to “kill the farmer.”

South African civil rights group AfriForum condemned the killing and also called for calm in a statement on its Web site.

“These events are a call to all South Africans to come to their senses and to be aware of the extremely polarized and violent circumstances presently prevalent in the country,” the statement said.

The group also said that “all communities — white, as well as black — should refrain from reckless statements and from romanticizing violence.”

Terreblanche’s AWB is best known for trying to block South Africa’s effort to end apartheid. The group used terrorist tactics in a bid to stall the country’s first all-race vote in 1994, killing more than 20 people in a wave of bombings on the eve of the elections.

Terreblanche was convicted of the 1996 attempted murder of Paul Motshabi, a black man who worked as a security guard on Terreblanche’s farm. He served about two-thirds of a five-year sentence.

He also was convicted of setting his dog on a black man in an earlier incident..

Governor Isa Yuguda presently finds his administration on the verge of unraveling amidst an overbearing litany of blind corruption and fermented greed via the hands of top officials of the Yuguda administration. Documentary evidence reveals the level of money laundering activities at the government house as grand scale.

What strikes as marveling is the sum of N3.8billion found in the bank account belonging to the commissioner of housing and environment in the person of Lele Raja who died recently of a heart attack at his home. Another marvel is the sum of N2.5billion discovered in the bank account belonging to the special assistant to the governor on projects. Of which, aggrieved officials within the government tell our correspondent that the monies found in the private bank accounts Governor Yuguda’s aides belong to the governor. Their claim is that the aides are holding the siphoned monies in care for the governor.

Cursory inspection into the Bauchi State financial transactions confirms the allegations as levied by the aggrieved officials within the Bauchi State governing circle. The illegal operation of the State Bank accounts by the Yuguda boys may have been the source of the said monies.

Particular attention is given to three accounts managed by the State - the one operated as the main government’s account with account number 230430000642501, the one belonging to the State’s Sub-treasury with account number 213430000532701, and another belonging to the office of the Secretary to the State Government [SSG] with account number 213430000677001.

Interestingly, the three accounts are domiciled in FIN Bank where Governor Isa Yuguda was formerly, the Managing Director. And the balance sheet for the three accounts for the period covering September 2008 to February 2009 reveals a jolting level of unprecedented corruption and financial crimes. The bank account statement for the State’s main account showed that within the three months of November 2008 to January 2009, FIN bank disbursed loans totaling N39.18billion in seven separate applications and disbursements – as tabulated in Table 1 below. This is in addition to a miscellaneous deposit of N500million on December 15, 2008 under the caption “AMT CREDITED FROM A/C CAP DEV PROJ” and sixteen major deposits made into the account amounting to N2.667billion – each under the caption “BY INSTRUMENT … CLEARING DAY”.

Table 1: Loan disbursements to Yuguda administration

To the informed in Bauchi State, the loan transactions suggest that the Bank and Isa Yuguda were collaborating in the looting of the State. It is recalled that Governor Yuguda who was the MD of Inland Bank before it morphed to FIN bank, unilaterally ordered the transfer of the State’s main account from Guaranteed Trust Bank to FIN bank, a day following his swearing-in as the governor of Bauchi State. His finance commissioner and secretary to the state government were immediately sourced from the bank.

However the graver financial crime may have been committed in the manner the Yuguda boys made huge and questionable withdrawals from the three accounts of the government. According to the account balance sheets, the Yuguda boys used Mohammed Yakubu, Abubakar Adamu, Yusuf Abdu and Adamu Yame as couriers to make the colossal withdrawals.

From the balance sheets which are in the possession of ukpakareports.com, the Yuguda administration made withdrawals totaling N9.1billion in cash within a span of six months. What strikes as puzzling is the frequency of the withdrawals. Below in Table 2 is a tabulation of some of the “cash” withdrawals from the sub-treasury account and the SSG account. It shows that the Yuguda boys made staggering cash withdrawals from the sub-treasury account. On February 12, 2009, they made three cash withdrawals totaling N921.2million [N921,166,200], on September 4, 2008, they made six cash withdrawals totaling N149,475,683, on September 5, 2008, they made ten cash withdrawals totalingN159,577,827. They also made cash withdrawals from the SSG accounts. They made three cash withdrawals totaling N88,483,365.

Table 2: Highlight of Daily Cash withdrawals

As a result of Isa Yuguda and his boy’s excesses, Bauchi State main accounts are currently in the red. The State has long gone bankrupt. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] were made aware of the rot in Bauchi State government on March 16, 2009 via a petition submitted to the EFCC. But the EFCC till date remain sedated to the financial crimes in Bauchi State. .

Nigerian police have arrested a couple after finding cocaine stuffed down the underwear of the mother and two six-year old twins as they tried to board a plane for London.

“Although the man was not found with any drugs, his wife and two children, who are twins aged six years, were found with cocaine hidden in their underwear,” an official of Nigeria’s drug law
enforcement agency said.

The woman was carrying more than three kilograms of cocaine while her children carried a total of around 700 grams, he said.

Narcotics agents detained the family as were was about to board a London-bound plane at Lagos’s Murtala Mohammed International airport on March 28.

“We have released the twins to other family members because they are minors and innocent while their parents will soon be taken to court for drug trafficking,” said the official..

Another senator from Gombe State, Senator Kawu Peto Dukku is dead. He was aged 52.

Dukku who represented Gombe North in the Senate died on Friday in Kaduna where he had gone to join his family for the one week Easter break declared by the Senate.

Dukku’s death is coming barely two days after Senator Tawa Wada who represented Gombe South passed on Wednesday at the National Hospital, Abuja.

With the death of the two lawmakers in the same week, Gombe now has only two representatives in the Senate..

Both senators participated in the screening of the new ministers who were cleared on Thursday.

Confirming Dukku’s dead, Senator Ayogu Eze, Chairman Senate committee on Information and Media in a statement today (Saturday) said the Senate would miss him for his humility and calmness in the Senate.

The statement reads’ "We announce with sadness the sudden death of our dear colleague, Senator. Kawu Peto Dukku, who until his death on Friday April 2, 2010 represented Gombe North in the Senate. He died in Kaduna where he had gone to join his family for the one-week Easter break of the Senate. We will miss his humility and calmness. May his soul rest in peace."

Dukku who was elected into the Senate in June 2007 on the platform of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was also the Speaker of Gombe State House of Assembly from 2003 to 2007.

He was until his death the Vice Chairman Senate Committee on States and Local Government Affairs.

Nuhu Ribadu, the former chief of Nigeria's anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has accepted an offer from Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, to be his special adviser on anti-corruption, good governance and sundry matters.

Presidency sources said at the weekend that Mr. Ribadu is expected to resume "in a matter of weeks" in Abuja. As part of his remit, Mr. Ribadu will be the presidential anchorman supervising the broad anti-corruption platform of the country which includes his former agency, the EFCC; the ICPC; the Code of Conduct Bureau and other related agencies.

He's back

Mr. Ribadu confirmed this in a telephone interview with NEXT at the weekend..

"Frankly I don't want to be drawn into any political discussion," he said. "But let me say it is true that I have been contacted. I also think it is only honest to say that Acting President Jonathan appears to have a keen understanding of the cogent priorities facing our nation which is currently teetering on the brink of disaster. It is probably right to also say he is taking the right steps on those critical priorities. For this reason, I believe it is the moral duty of Nigerians to support all efforts to save our country."

Mr. Ribadu is, at the moment, winding up a plum fellowship at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a think tank in Washington D.C. dedicated to international issues of development. During his fellowship at the CGD, he was the lead person for the centre on anti-corruption, institutional reform, and African law enforcement policy. During this same period, he undertook special missions to advise many African countries who were just setting up anti-corruption and financial intelligence agencies.

Among the notable institutions that he consulted for were the World Bank and the United Nations (UN).

Mr. Ribadu also consulted for a host of western authorities including the United States government and the European Union (EU).

Presidency sources in Abuja said they expect Mr. Ribadu to meet with Mr. Jonathan, who will be visiting Washington at the invitation of the US president, Barack Obama, next week.

Ribadu's troubles

The former anti-corruption czar, for the past two years, had been in a running battle with the Umaru Yar'Adua led government, culminating in Mr. Ribadu's exile and the decision to take up fellowship offers, first at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and then CDG in the US.

Last year, Mr. Ribadu admitted the decision to leave Nigeria was for self preservation. "I had to leave the country on January 3 this year (2009) after a relentless persecution which climaxed in two assassination attempts," he said in November.

At the height of his troubles with Nigeria's ailing president, Umaru Yar'Adua, who has not been seen since he took an emergency medical vacation five months ago, the former EFCC boss was dramatically charged to court with the alleged failure to properly declare his assets during his tenure as the EFCC chairman.

Mr. Ribadu was said to have failed to produce an asset declaration form, which is a crime for all senior public officers who do not do so, according to the Nigerian constitution. The Fifth Schedule of the 1999 constitution mandates all public office holders to declare all their assets.

Mr. Ribadu however consistently refutes the charges and said that he had not defaulted in the asset declaration procedure. According to him, his asset declaration forms were "submitted on assumption of office in March 2003 and (on) my exit from office in December 2008. I assert that there is no substance to this case; that my assets were (not) declared. How could I have been confirmed for my position in 2003 if I did not submit an asset declaration form to the Senate, as all officers needing senate confirmation are obligated to do?"

Insisting that the forms are in the safe custody of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Mr. Ribadu further urged the Code of Conduct Tribunal to call for the documents. "Is it also not in the power of the Tribunal to simply order the Code of Conduct Bureau to produce certified true copies of my asset declaration if this is what truly concerns the Tribunal?" he asked.

In the clear

Last week however, the federal government indicated its desire to withdraw its case against Mr. Ribadu at the Code of Conduct Tribunal last week, admitting that it had no case against the former EFCC boss.

Mr. Ribadu's fight with the government is seen to have come to an end as the former anti-graft boss prepares to return home after months of exile abroad.

The former anti-corruption czar is looking forward to it. "It is important for us to know that the nation has lost a huge ground in the past two years (and) it would take the collective effort of all patriotic Nigerians to work for the restoration of their country. I certainly look forward to coming back soon," Mr. Ribadu said.

All 95 passengers on board an Arik Air aircraft headed en route Abuja from Calabar, yesterday, found themselves in a mad rush as they scrambled to get off the aircraft when a car crashed into the plane shortly before takeoff at the Margaret Ekpo International Airport in Calabar.

A rickety salon car, painted blue and white, the official colour pattern of registered taxis in Calabar, ran into the aircraft just as the aircraft doors were being shut, a passenger said.

A man, who claimed that he is Jesus Christ, emerged from the car after the collision and declared that he had made the desperate move to save the aircraft from an impending crash.

The man, who carried a huge bible and a huge cross, said he was trying to save the aircraft, a Boeing 737 700, and the passengers departing Calabar for Abuja. The man was promptly arrested by airport officials.

Shakened passengers who scrambled out of the plane after an announcement by the captain, were asked to wait for another aircraft which would ferry them to their destination.

"We were strapping in, they were about to shut the door when we heard a loud bang. And then the captain said ‘everybody rush out', so we all rushed out," a lady who was on board the flight with her baby, said. The passengers, who were scheduled to depart by 2.30pm, finally left around 5.30 pm after the airline provided an alternative aircraft.

Arik blames FAAN

The spokesman of the airline, Ola Adebanji, speaking , confirmed the incident but said that the airline was not to blame for the accident.

"I can confirm to you that a taxi ran into our Boeing 737 700 aircraft, an Abuja-bound flight. Arik is not in charge of security at the airport. All the airports belong to FAAN and they are in charge of security at the airports," Mr. Adebanji said yesterday.

Mr. Adebanji asked all questions on the security of the Margeret Ekpo International Airport, Calabar to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).

"You can ask FAAN and airport authorities how the taxi beat airport authorities. We don't provide security at the airports," he said.

The frightened passengers re-boarded the new aircraft provided by the airline, but questioned the seriousness of the airport security officials.

"How the taxi managed to get to the aircraft is what baffles me," a frantic passenger, who gave her name as Candi, said in a telephone interview with NEXT.

FAAN's response

The General Manager for Public Affairs in FAAN, Akin Olukunle, confirmed the incident but denied that there were passengers on board the aircraft.

"Nobody was on board the flight. The passengers were yet to board because the aircraft was just arriving from Lagos," Mr. Olukunle claimed. His claim was debunked by the Arik Air spokesman.

"The passengers were on board. In fact, we were about to shut the doors," Mr. Adebanji of Arik said.

The FAAN spokesman further said that the airport authorities could not deter the taxi driver because he was on top speed and crashed through their barriers..

"The guy was running. He was driving an Audi car. He just slammed into the first and second barriers that were guarded by air force officials. He was on top speed," Mr. Olukunle said.

Mr. Olukunle said he would not blame anyone for the accident, but that the police was now investigating the matter.

"The Air Force men arrested the man and the police is now working with them to investigate the matter," he said.