Soldiers Raid Communities in Search of Militants
From Segun James in Yenagoa, 02.08.2008
The Joint Task Force on the Niger Delta yesterday raided villages bordering the Tora Manifold along the Nembe Creek in search of militants who killed three naval officers in a recent attack.
The raid on the villages followed the expiration of the 72- hour ultimatum given the people to produce the killers or face the wrath of the military.
Also yesterday daredevil militants operating along the creeks of the Niger Delta once again attacked the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) facility, where three naval men were killed last week, blowing up a pipeline and causing heavy oil spillage.
THISDAY gathered that the militants, even before the commencement of the military operation, in a daring move, invaded the same facility despite heavy military presence and blow up the pipelines through which all oil evacuated from oil wells are taken to the Bonny Terminal.
It would be recalled that the Military High Command ordered the immediate invasion of the area where the naval ratings on guard duties at the Tora flow station were killed and fish out the killers. All effort to confirm the attack on the manifold from relevant authorities proved abortive as at 8.00 pm yesterday.
but a steady stream of people who claimed their communities have been invaded by soldiers continued to enter Yenagoa as at yesterday evening. Others claimed that the heavy presence of the soldiers along the creeks and rivers leading to their communities force them to flee to safety. Contacted, the Commander of the Joint Task Force in Yenagoa, Lt. Col. Chris Musa denied both the attack and the invasion. According to him, the military only went to the area to replace the house boat that was destroyed in the attack that killed the three naval ratings. Musa in a reply to a text message sent to him wrote, “I just spoke to my source. The destroyed house boat was removed today and replaced with a new one. No explosive around the area reported.” The Commander was however silent on the reported sacking of communities by soldiers.
Celtel to Invest $1billion on Network in 2008By Efem Nkanga The Managing Director of Celtel Nigeria, Mr Bayo Ligali has disclosed plans by the company to invest one billion US dollars on its network to improve its quality of service. He also disclosed that Celtel which has built 3100 base stations in 2007 is planning to build 1000 more base stations in 2008.Ligali at an interactive session with newsmen yesterday admitted that Quality of Service is not at the standard it should be and apologised to Nigerians on Celtel’s behalf for falling short of expectations of its subscribers.Ligali stated that ‘’ It is certain that our customers and indeed all telecommunications subscribers in Nigeria are less than satisfied with the Quality of Service on offer today. So, let me apologise on behalf of all of us at CeltelNigeria for falling short of the expectations of our customers. In making this apology, I am hoping that our customers would appreciate the peculiar environment within which we operate, and the challenges we have had to face to deliver the same service other operators deliver elsewhere in other countries with relative ease.’’ He stated that Celtel in 2007, committed over $1billion in Network Expansion in terms of coverage, capacity and quality. He added that ‘’we are committing another $1b this year and we are optimistic that by the end of this year, the hue and cry over Quality of Service will almost disappear. My optimism is also based on the fact that other Operators are also investing in Network Expansion, because if one is building and others are not, the result will be insignificant’’. Moving forward, he stated that Celtel in 2008 will tackle five critical issues, namely, Network Capacity, Network Resilience, Network Reliability, Power, Security and Operational Performance that will make the network meet customer expectations. He emphasised that Celtel has awarded a contract to Nokia siemens to help it expand its capacity, while in the meantime it has leased fibre optic nationwide capacity to provide medium term relief and resilience until Celtel’s infrastructure is fully operational. He also stated that Celtel was distributing core switching and building soft switches in capacity centres around the country connected to the Microwave and Fibre Optics backbones for resilience and plans to double its switching capacity from 10 to 20 in 2008. He however decried the state of Nitel, the first National Carrier, stressing that some of these investments would have been unnecessary had it been that NITEL provided the needed capacity as anticipated by the operators at inception. According to him, the huge investments in transmission capacity are distracting the operators from channelling their energies and resources into providing core GSM services.Among other measures enumerated by him to improve Celtel’s network, includes implementation of network KPI (Key Performance Indicator) automation to report and routinely intervene in quality impacting issues, outsourcing of monthly and quarterly network quality measurements and benchmarking, comprehensive reporting tools and audits to proactively manage network quality, leading-edge monitoring and auditing tools with routine external audits to validate network quality, massive generator swap, dualisation and transformers installation program. Completed 100% in Lagos and now being implemented nationwide currently, new generators with extended service interval, improved reliability and integrated anti-theft features etc. He further added that Celtel has embarked on a New National Network Monitoring Centre,valued at $10m, which will be completed in 2008 with World class facilities to proactively monitor and intervene in network issues.Ligali also stated that Celtel because of quality of service challenges has invested over $2billion in coverage, quality & capacity and promised Nigerians that very soon, the results will start to manifest.
