Edo State, Nigeria. #freetransit for school children

WorldStage News | Oshiomhole announces free transport for students, condemns Chibok abductions: "Accordng to him, “today, as a mark of our appreciation on the hardship that many of our parents are encountering and the difficulties of the financial challenges that many families are experiencing, I have decided that with effect from tomorrow morning, 6:00am, any Edo Child who is in school uniform going from school or returning from school, if he wears his school uniform, whether he attends a private or public school will no longer pay any ticket for using the Comrade Bus.

“The management will be directed to ply all the routes in Benin City and once you are wearing your uniform, you will board those buses free of charge whether you are going to school or you are returning from school. This is something we are doing just to show that we care. This is one way we can deliver more subsidy in a way that cannot be abused by any middle man.”"

Zimbabwe: Reliable Public Transport System Vital

allAfrica.com : "But all the foregoing still leave everyone vulnerable to unscrupulous kombi drivers. What we need as a nation is a viable public transport system which ensures that people can move from point A to point B in a predictable way. Our roads are overcrowded; in fact they have long exceeded their carrying capacity.

Add to that, the madness of reckless kombi drivers who are forced to meet unrealistic targets by greedy vehicle owners who leave them with little time to rest.

Thousands of those kombis are not regularly serviced, don't have route permits and the drivers are often under-qualified or half drunk most of the time. That's a cocktail for disaster.

Having a reliable public transport system will reduce our people's exposure to these risky options.

The infrastructure cluster under Zim-Asset should get our city authorities and engineers thinking about the way forward. A combination of buses and trains should do the trick. This is a top priority area not just to facilitate commerce but also to save lives. It makes business and moral sense."

Privatization of transport a failure in Nigeria

New transport policy: A lesson in self-indictment: "WITH the announcement by the Federal Government, early this year, that it was putting together a framework that would form the bedrock of a new transportation policy for country, we need not look any further for the reasons for the failures of recent attempts at Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) to develop some of our public infrastructure."

Spotlight on school transport after deaths

IOL.co.za: "“I’m very concerned about the continued use of bakkies to transport the public, especially school learners. We strongly urge parents to work with us to ensure that learners are safe on the road.”

The MEC said various factors – including whether the children involved in yesterday’s crash were seated or not; whether they were protected by a “barricade”; and if the vehicle had a canopy – would have to be taken into account to determine if the driver had been reckless.

The government would continue to extend free pupil transport services to more needy communities as part of the process of providing easy access to transportation and education."

Terrorism is created by spy agencies to justify access to oil

The U.S.-Algerian security pact is about energy, not al-Qaeda - Al Arabiya News: "Professor Jeremy Keenan, a world authority on the Sahara-Sahel region from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, points to “longstanding collusion between Algeria’s secret police, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité [Department of Intelligence and Security, or DRS] and local terrorists.”"

Boko Haram a creation of Western oil-controlled governments, handy excuse to invade Nigeria

Behind the rise of Boko Haram - ecological disaster, oil crisis, spy games | Nafeez Ahmed | Environment | The Guardian: "What we're not being told, however, is that al-Qaeda's rapid expansion through northwest Africa has occurred under the rubric of Algerian state intelligence services - with US, French and British knowledge."

ANC Manifesto calls for accessible, reliable, and affordable public transport

Politicsweb - Slight decline in ANC majority a warning against complacency - COSATU - PARTY: "g) Providing accessible, reliable and affordable public transport."

Nigerians steal back their own oil and it is called theft.

Cheap oil has peaked. Now a mad dash for what is left. Common sense and safety are cast aside. Nigeria oil is being reclaimed by local entrepreneurs. Criminal international oil companies are losing control. No one will gain from this fight. It is time to turn away from cars and free ourselves from this madness.

Nigerian oil theft “on industrial scale”: production target “unachievable”. : Jeremy Leggett's Triple Crunch Log: "Criminal gangs are stealing anything between 100,000 b/d and 400,000 b/d from wells and pipelines in the Niger Delta, reselling the crude – worth several billion US dollars – to buyers as far afield as Latin America.
The theft – and the sabotage often associated with it – is forcing major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Eni of Italy, Chevron of the US and Total of France, to shut down wells too.
The crime wave adds distance to the official target of lifting Nigerian oil production to 4m b/d by 2020.
Foreign industry executives have long warned that, even in normal circumstances, the objective was ambitious. Now, it appears unachievable."