i was watching a documentary of discovery science channel and I felt proud of america's achievements and motivation for scientific development here is a short description of what i remembered of the start of the documentary.

The soviet union led to an early lead in the space race when it launched the first artificial satelite, on october 1st 1957 spudnik went into orbit and the U.S were so upset, they said THESE PEOPLE CANT BUILD A REFRIGERATOR HOW CAN THEY GET INTO ORBIT, how did this happen!! to beat the soviets NASA would have to put a man into orbit but only rockets could go fast enough more than 27000 km/h and they dubbed the program PROJECT MERCURY and it gathered a team of determined scientists and engineers and they needed to figure out how to fly a military missile with a man on top, and at the time no man had ever survived a vertical blast off on top of a rocket so the risks were extremely high so at first even considered stuntmen for the job, the suggested people like evil knievel but President Eisenhower said he'd rather have military test pilots, so they tested the pilots they had and 110 of the military's best pilots qualified and NASA selected the top 7 dubbed the MERCURY ASTRONAUTS
1. wally schirra : A man of detail and made the best text book flight of them all
2. alan sheperd: extremely smart
3. Scott carver: the first scientist astronaut
4. Gordon cooper: The best pilot of the bunch
5. Deke Slayton: Nobody messed with and a great human being in every way
6. Gus grissom: engineering savvy
John glen: A civilised man and probably the most level headed.

the fact that you want Nigeria to "outdo" other, instead of try to achieve similar stuff on a lower scale, is the reason why Nigeria will always fail.
nations around the world have a minimum of 20yrs head start (and i am generous) in every field/subject on earth....and here you are talking about Nigeria outdoing these countries. do you even listen to what you are saying.......how can you even comparegood ol' 9ja with Russia?! even with all the Oligarch in that country, the country is going places and can rival many in countless fields.

as for Nigeria, apart from 419 and corruption, i dont see any other areas where the country is blessed to the point of rivalling with other nations.

MRbrownJAY: the fact that you want Nigeria to "outdo" other, instead of try to achieve similar stuff on a lower scale, is the reason why Nigeria will always fail.
nations around the world have a minimum of 20yrs head start (and i am generous) in every field/subject on earth....and here you are talking about Nigeria outdoing these countries. do you even listen to what you are saying.......how can you even comparegood ol' 9ja with Russia?! even with all the Oligarch in that country, the country is going places and can rival many in countless fields.

as for Nigeria, apart from 419 and corruption, i dont see any other areas where the country is blessed to the point of rivalling with other nations.

MrbrownJAY I am not suggesting Nigeria should try to outdo Russia or the United states but even if that were the case, I fail to see whats wrong with that, the fact another country has had some years head start ahead of you does not mean you cant catch up or super-cede them, look at Nigeria for example, we used to be known as the giant of Africa with the Malaysians coming to learn about the whole palm oil trade from us, Ghanaians trooping into Nigeria in droves in the 70's and 80's and different industries springing up on our shores but look at us today in comparison to these countries, also remember what happened to japan after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings by the Americans, who could ever think at the time that they would be at par with that same United States in this our lifetime after such a disaster but they could only achieve that by collective effort and the overall desire to develop all the sectors of their economy and not be seen as peasants by any country, the desire to rise from the ashes and show the world that despite the obstacles they can compete with the very best.
My point simply is that contrary to your opinion we shouldn't just sit back and accept the status quo that we are a third world nation with no possible way of being able to compete with the developed nations of the world which I personally believe is a mindset borne out of inferiority complex and is something the african nations suffer greatly from.
Any Government in the world can only deliver varying fractions of what the people long and clamour for and never all or more than it, so if all we as Nigerians ever want is something as basic as electricity, water and good roads what would happen is when a president or state governor comes into office and does a very small percentage of these extremely basic things, we sing his praises and only complain about the ones that do next to nothing, and that is how the politicians manage to get away with robbing us blind and no one is bothered to do anything about it, I was in Nigeria last year for the Christmas break when it was announced that the price of fuel would increase to unimaginable amounts and I automatically knew this was more than ridiculous and there was no way the average man could survive that, to my surprise people took to the streets and protested it hence the govt had no choice but to revert their position on the inhumane fuel increase, so basically if we as a people set a high enough standard for ourselves and the government then it would be a lot more difficult for our leaders to sit in office and not do a little of the very high expectations set for them by the people rather than a little of the very low expectations we have come to accept as ok.
If you consider the the most developed western countries one thing that's a constant is the constant demand for more from their governments, as much as we sing Obama's praise songs in Africa, he isn't just sitting pretty in the white house resting on his laurels, he constantly has to deal with criticisms from his citizens and fellow politicians because of the drive for more to be done, if it were Nigeria or some country in west Africa that was gifted with such an intellect as a president, the minute he successfully passed the Obama health care bill he would have achieved rock star status and been told to just relax and that he had done enough.
Nigerians need to stop thinking and expecting so little from these politicians, we all know about all the looting thats going on which is denying us all the dividends of democracy but we sit back and do nothing but murmur amongst ourselves about it, If our mindset where to constantly strive to outdo developed nations in the world(which mind you is very possible just check brazil or india's ranking amongst nations and you would know what i am talking about) we would know that our current snail speed at the so called socio-economic development is unacceptable and we would be moving a lot faster. We should strive to set a high enough benchmark for our leaders and we would be surprised at what we can achieve as a nation and that starts with expecting and demanding more of our politicians. That's how the developed nations of the world came about, we shouldn't sit back like beggars with no pride waiting for alms and expect any tangible development, it needs to come with a desire to want to emulate in some ways or outdo a much more developed country and that's how we can have a quantitative measure of how well we are doing as a Nation.

bro...what you wrote gave me a headache, but let me help you understand what i am saying:
- there is something very wrong when you see this as some kind of competition, in order for Nigeria to become the best in the world at whatever. instead, you should think at what is best FOR NIGERIANS.

- how do you want to catch up anybody out there when YOU (yes you as an individual) keep on electing the garbage government that the country has had?! the day you make the right choices in voting, is the day you will start to go forward, until then the country will remain in stand still as it has been for decades.

- stop talking about how Nigeria was viewed by others , and instead look at what Nigeria REALLY is/was. other countries have evolved thanks to the right mindset and the right governing body, while Nigeria has only been producing looter who became billionaires with bank accounts in Switzerland. after the bombing, every single Japanese worked for the rebuilding of the country COLLECTIVELY......how dare you want to compare them with selfish Nigerians who only think about their own pocket, or that of their immediate family (dont crucify me as i am only the messenger).

- whio said we should sit back and accept the situation that the country is in? i said that in order to change you should first BRING CHANGE TO THE TABLE, because we can clearly see that what has been done (and keep on doing) is not working. but even if ALL these changes were to come in effect, there is NO WAY Nigeria could be in the same league as any of these countries, like you would want to. thinking that all these other countries got where they are in a few yrs, is an insult to COMMONN SENSE!

- are you saying that the average man can survive the state the country is in? why have the common man NOT taken to the street then for all the other problems of Nigeria? or is fuel price surcharge the only problem in Nigeria worth going to the streets for?

- as i said, the people who elect these BS thief head of state, are the ONLY one to blame....so start pointing fingers at NIgerians for the state that the country is in.

- you are going on and on about stuff that is irrelevant to the subject at hand......... no matter how great Nigeria become tomorrow, we should NOT expect to be on level with other nations and rival with them, thats the WRONG MINDSET........ we should simply expect to have a better life standards for the common Nigerian, than what they have had in the past. thats the way to go, instead of comparing yourself with Ghanaians or whoever.