- Nigeria shrouded in thick dust, NAMA cancelled all flight
- Gunmen killed 25 in Adamawa serial attacks
According to Golda Meir, one cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.
There have undoubtedly been both awful and good occurrences in the past. There is no new tale to be told if everything is carefully analyzed in light of historical precedent. Oddities, though, are ubiquitous. They are not new, even though we are not aware of them.
In an effort to respect historical values and bring events to the doorsteps of our esteemed readers, WITHIN NIGERIA has highlighted three significant events that occurred on March 24 in this country’s history.
Nigeria shrouded in dust, NAMA cancelled all flights
On this date, 24th of March in 2010, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) grounded all flights due to poor visibility caused by a thick dust storm.
According to reports, most parts of Nigeria was shrouded in a thick dust storm, disrupting air travel and threatening to trigger respiratory problems.
Experts revealed that climate change may be responsible for the severity and abnormal timing of the storm. Normally milder dust storms arrive between November and February when seasonal winds blow sand down from the Sahara desert.
“That this is happening in March is unusual and because of its severity, it is causing concerns among the people,” senior weather forecaster Samson Wilson told AFP.
He said the skies were expected to clear and the weather was due to return to normal in the coming few days.
The dust storm first hit the northern part of last week before sweeping southwards at the weekend.
Gunmen killed 25 in Adamawa
On this date, 24th of March in 2013, it was confirmed by security authorities that gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram launched a series of gun and bomb attacks in a remote town along Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, killing at least 25 people.
According to reports, the gunmen carried out four simultaneous assaults on Ganye in Adamawa state on Friday, opening fire on a bar, a bank, a prison warder and separately attacking a prison.
Police spokesman for the Adamawa state, Ibrahim said ‘Twenty five people were killed in total in four different simultaneous attacks by gunmen in Ganye’.
Members of insurgent group Boko Haram were the prime suspects, he said. Violence by Islamist insurgents in northern Nigeria is on the rise again after a brief lull.
Three bombs exploded in the north’s main city of Kano on Saturday, Kano state police spokesman Magaji Majiya said by telephone.
One of the bombings was a suicide attack, but did not claim any lives apart from those of the bombers. However, a remote control bomb targeting a joint military and police checkpoint wounded several police, he said.
A separate gun attack in the city’s Dakata area killed one person on Saturday, he said.
Majiya said four people had been arrested in connection with the attacks.
