Abuloma80:
[size=8pt]If the Chilean miners were here, [/size]

Its lengthy, but endure to read it - very humorous!1


Last week, while the entire human race was breathing a collective sigh of relief watching the trapped Chilean miners being rescued one by one from a hole 600 meters underground, many people around the world did not know that there was a similar mine cave-in here in Nigeria and that we also mounted a spectacular rescue operation of our own.

Since many of you have not heard of it, let me tell you the whole story. First of all, as soon as word spread through the grapevine that a mine had caved in and trapped 33 Nigerian miners, there was confusion and everyone was running helter skelter, in no particular direction.
Later that day, the redoubtable Ministry of Information in Abuja denied that anything of the sort had happened. It attributed the “wicked rumours” to “saboteurs who are trying to smear this country’s Rebranding Campaign.”

Two days later, the Federal Government of Nigeria admitted that something of the sort did happen. It however turned out that the mine was an illegal one, and neither the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development nor the Geological Surveys had any record of its existence. The name of the company that operated the mine, International Golden Fleece, was not registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission. The mine’s directors were therefore able to vanish without trace.

Three days after the cave in, uniformed and plain-cloth agents from 15 different Nigerian security agencies descended on the site: Army, Air Force, Navy, Police, Strike Force, Guards Brigade, Road Safety, Civil Defence, SSS, NIA, DIA, Customs, Prison, Immigration and Nigeria Legion and they openly clashed with one another.

Four days after the accident, a political storm raged across Nigeria. Mine engineers and seismologists said an earth tremor caused the mine’s roof to cave in, and they had a week earlier warned of impending seismic movements in the region. The President of the Federal Republic however denied that earth tremors were responsible. He said he knew who was responsible for the disaster.

Three more days later, it was revealed that an aide close to the President had called geologists and asked them to withdraw their claim that the cave-in was natural, so that he could blame Northerners for dynamiting the roof. As soon as Al Jazeera television reported this story, the Northern Political Leaders Forum called on the president to resign, failing which the National Assembly should impeach him. Days later, the president responded by saying the constitutional clause for impeachment should not be abused.

Ten days after the accident, leaders of the Northern Political Summit paid a solidarity visit to the president and they urged him not to comment anymore on the mine collapse since he is a zoologist, not a geologist. They also said he should resist the temptation to defend every rock, gravel or sand that caves in anywhere in Nigeria.

The president thanked them for the advice. He however said “it was the only sin I committed” because many previous disasters in Nigeria such as Langalanga train derailment, Jesse pipeline explosion, Tiga Dam burst and Bellview air crash were not investigated because they were attributed to natural causes.

The National Emergency Management Agency [NEMA] then rushed to the scene with a Ukrainian-made helicopter, speed boats and fire engines, none of which could reach the trapped miners. Another 2 days later, the Minister of Works visited the site for an on-the-spot assessment. After the inspection, he announced that government will award a contract to rescue the miners.

The Ministry’s preparations were however delayed because the director in charge of Hazardous Operations left Abuja for the weekend and did not return until Monday afternoon. He attributed his lateness to the traffic situation on the Gwagwalada/Airport road. He then sat down and prepared a memo for the contract, and was very careful to build his 10% commission into it.

The Public Procurement Act provides that the contract must be by international competitive bidding, but the President waived this requirement in favour of selective tender, given the urgency of the situation. The bids then went to the Ministerial Tenders Board, and because the minister was “interested” in one of the companies, it was given the job despite doubts that it could handle it. A memo was then sent to the Federal Executive Council [FEC], which ratified it a fortnight later.

However, more delay resulted because the Association of Nigerian Contractors [ANC] protested that only foreign firms were invited to make bids. The National Assembly then asked the government to withhold the contract while it carried out an oversight function and held public hearings. While the hearings were on, one Senator declared that since the mine cave in occurred in his constituency, the contract must be treated as a constituency project.

After the Assembly hearings ended, the contract moved to the Due Process Office, which delayed it for a month because it said there was no bank guarantee, performance bond, tax clearance certificate, declaration of assets or letters of credit. After several newspapers wrote editorials condemning the delay, the Bureau of Public Procurement issued a Due Process Certificate and the Accountant General issued a warrant, but there was no cash backing. A week of buck passing then ensued between the Ministry of Finance, Office of the Accountant General and the Central Bank before the contract was cash-backed.

Finally, the contractor mobilised to site three months after the cave in but when he arrived, he found that militant youths had barricaded the site, demanding to be “settled” before the heavy equipment could pass through their community.

Two weeks later, the contractor began drilling into the collapsed mine, but the Chief Rescue Engineer was kidnapped on his way to work and a ransom of N100m was demanded for his release. He was rescued a week later by the Joint Task Force, and rescue work resumed at the site. On the day that the engineer reappeared, some people vandalised the cables of the dedicated power line to the mine, so diesel-powered generators had to be brought in. Over the next three weeks, steady progress was made, until shortage of diesel for the generators halted the operation because members of NUPENG’s Tanker Drivers Division went on strike to protest police harassment at a nearby checkpoint.

After another month of drilling, the shaft hit the spot where the miners were trapped. The chief engineer then called for the escape capsule imported from China. He was told that due to the delay in clearance at the Tin Can Island port by the Customs and 15 other agencies, the capsule was diverted to Cotonou, where it was offloaded and some smugglers were hired to bring it in via the Seme border.

The capsule finally arrived in a DAF truck and was lowered through the shaft to the trapped miners. Unlike in Chile, no Nigerian engineer was ready to go into the collapsed mine to organise the rescue effort. As a result, once the capsule reached the bottom, the desperate miners all rushed to get in. They ignored the order to go into the capsule one by one, and they held it up for a week while they debated the formula for deciding who will go in first.

Someone suggested a zoning formula, that there should be rotation by geopolitical zone. Although this formula was adopted, one trapped miner beat the queue and sat on an attachment seat in the capsule. He quoted the President of the Federal Republic as saying that zoning only applies after the ship captain is selected.

Monday, 18 October 2010 (Mahmud Jega mmjega@dailytrust.com, 08054102925)