Sunday 1 September 2013

Arik Stowaway boy: The big picture by Theophilus Ilevbare


Nigerians woke up on Sunday 25 August, 2013 to learn of a stowaway teenage boy, Daniel Ohikhena, who flew with Arik’s flight W3 544 from Benin to Lagos, thinking the plane was US-bound! Daniel, probably, had fantasised of life in far away America, watched films where some movie stars in a feign show of bravado, stowaway precariously on fast moving cars and aircrafts , chose to be the hero in reality, difficult to tell if he was oblivious of the risk his bluster involved, how far a flight from Benin to US was, or how he planned to survive extreme weather conditions. Only the intrepid adolescent had the answers to these questions. As mother luck would have it, the flight was Lagos-bound.
In other climes, where security breaches – in the face of increasing global terror attacks – are not treated with kid gloves, heads will roll in the aviation sector. The laxity of airport officials underscores the insecurity in the country. Our ‘smart’ airport officials, come alive when luggage are in sight. Missing baggage and other valuables are common place in Nigeria’s airports.
The war of words and blame trading between Arik Air and Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has continued unabated.  FAAN investigations revealed “that a passenger on board the flight called the attention of the cabin crew while the aircraft was waiting to take off at the threshold of the runway, to the effect that they had seen a young boy go under the aircraft and had not seen him re-appear on the other side.” It was gathered that the cabin crew then informed the pilot who radioed the airport control tower to verify. The airport official ignored the request to conduct a check, but instead, gave the all clear for take off.
From the foregoing, it is crystal clear that FAAN officials were complacent, and should accept responsibility that they failed in first, protecting the airports area from intruders and secondly, conducting a thorough check on the plane before take-off. Their lackadaisical attitude and negligence of duty would have brought down the plane in shreds had it been a terrorist was the stowaway. However, security is a responsibility for all players in the aviation industry. Arik could have taken it upon themselves to be thorough. The level of complacency in this country is alarming. If there are no sanctions for this incident, the task of averting future air mishap becomes a mirage. The porous state of airport security calls for worry at a time the nation is struggling to curb the spate of insurgency, terrorists desperate to destabilize Nigeria and spill as much blood as possible are ever lurking.
But how long will it take the Ministry of Aviation to beef up security at the nation’s airports is a question only themselves can answer; starting with the delayed erection of perimeter fences across airports nationwide. Why for example, should armed bandits raid the gateway airport in Lagos seamlessly, even with the avalanche of security agencies at the airport?
Remember how the claims by the former Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Dr. Harold Demuren, that the explosives found on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, did not pass through the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Ikeja, Lagos? The would-be terrorist eventually opened up that he, indeed, passed through the Lagos airport, twice, with the deadly devices undetected. Mutallab was said to have told an American investigator that he got the devices in Yemen and brought them to Lagos. He then transported them from Lagos to Amsterdam. That is how safe our airports are.
The shear bravery exhibited by the adolescent stowaway is what has taken many by awe. Aviation experts are still at a loss how the lad survived the turbulence at such altitude. Information on Wikipedia reveal that stowaways in aircraft wheel wells face numerous health risks, many of which are fatal, which include: being mangled when undercarriage retracts, tinnitus, deafness, hypothermia, hypoxia, frostbite, acidosis or falling off when the doors of the compartment reopen. Thirteen cases of stowaway incidents in the United States alone were reported by a 1997 study, resulting in 8 deaths. The Arik Air flight from Benin to Lagos is a short trip which did not necessitate high altitude cruise, else Daniel Ihekina would not have survived. We would want to think that protocol should have demanded that, the SSS should have first took him for medical examined before commencing their investigation.
His bravery reminds us of the failure of governance. Citizens in droves, take to life threatening voyage, to go across borders in search of greener pastures but never before have we seen a compatriot this young, this daring. There are some points worthy of note.
First, if at his age, he could muster enough courage to stowaway, then such energy if properly groomed by education, his services as a matured adult can be of colossal benefit to the country as a pilot, in the SSS, military intelligence or any of the nation’s security agencies. It is a pointer to the abundant human resources the country possesses. As I write, he has been awarded a scholarship to university level. But was it carefully thought out? Shouldn’t we be mindful of what we reward in the face of mounting security challenges?
Secondly, the stowaway’s desperado is a reflection of the frightening level of abject poverty in the county and bleak future starring Nigerian teenagers and youths in the face. If not, the lad wouldn’t have given even a second thought to such a dangerous escapade. What is the government of the day doing to impact the lives of the common man? A teenager of thirteen years already knows he can live a better life in America. He grows up with that mindset that nothing good can come out of his country. For now, to be at par with, or leapfrog America and the rest of the developed world is almost unrealistic, but government can make life less miserable for its citizens. The Nigerian people are not asking for too much, just basic amenities like good roads, electricity, health care, good schools and security of lives and properties that a teenager will never have to fantasise of going abroad. An adolescent in his native country, say Germany, Netherlands, Japan or Qatar never thinks of going overseas in search of greener pastures. Government can work towards a better Nigeria where even air travel becomes affordable to everyone and a teenager won’t have any reason to stowaway, if he ever have to go to the US. And yes, who says Nigeria can’t be greater than America?
The SSS might have to overlook Daniel’s risky adventure if it is found that he had no intent to terrorise, perpetrate a criminal act or pose any threat to passengers onboard. Funny as it seem, some give him credit not only for beating the security officials at their game but also for flying safely. Incredible, isn’t it?
-See more at: http://ilevbare.com/2013/08/arik-stowaway-boy-big-picture-theophilus-ilevbare/#sthash.di18wkNF.dpuf


Tuesday 30 April 2013

A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper

If scientific writing is an art, replying to a reviewer can be your masterpiece.
And this is what frustration can do to you: A letter from a frustrated author to a journal paper. The amusement is guaranteed (I laughed so much).














Dear Sir, Madame, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of Ms. #1996-02-22-RRRRR, that is the re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the g-d-running head!
Hopefully, we have suffered enough now to satisfy even you and the bloodthirsty reviewers.
I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change we made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that your anonymous reviewers are less interested in the details of scientific procedure than in working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations by seeking some kind of demented glee in the sadistic and arbitrary exercise of tyrannical power over hapless authors like ourselves who happen to fall into their clutches.
We do understand that, in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they were not reviewing manuscripts they would probably be out mugging little old ladies or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask him to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them, the review process could be unduly delayed.


Some of the reviewers comments we could not do anything about. For example, if (as C suggested) several of my recent ancestors were indeed drawn from other species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were implemented, however, and the paper has been improved and benefited. Plus, you suggested that we shorten the manuscript by five pages, and we were able to accomplish this very effectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a different font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is much better this way.
One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions 13-28 by reviewer B. As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before sending your decision letter), that reviewer listed 16 works that he/she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American war from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone whom reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle this, we have modified the Introduction and added, after the review of the relevant literature, a subsection entitled ``Review of Irrelevant Literature'' that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions from other reviewers.
We hope you will be pleased with this revision and will finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process, and to express our appreciation for your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to this journal.
Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we liked the paper much better the way we originally submitted it, but you held the editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to chop, reshuffle, hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper into stir-fried vegetables. We could not or would not  have done it without your input.

Source: http://marialuisaaliotta.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/when-publishing-gets-tough-letter-from-a-frustrated-author/


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