It's very easy to condemn the Government [and rightly so]. It's very easy to see what is wrong.
The generation before us has failed cataclysmically.
The present government cannot save us!
We must save ourselves!
The only way to save ourselves is by organizing ourselves through various media.

This thread is for all of us to put forward various suggestions as to how we can save ourselves in spite of our government and to engage in meaningful debate on the various suggestions put forward.

Remember, it is easy to criticise someone else's suggestions therefore let us make sure that our criticisms carry in themselves the some kind of solution to the problem identified in the suggestions being critiqued.

1. Reverse GEJs policy of opening the ports to the goods that were banned during the OBJ era and institute a BUY NIGERIAN policy to encourage local businesses.

2. STOP the importation of non-essential services and create a process for the understudy of specialist services that cannot be provided by Nigerians with a view to transferring the knowledge needed within the shortest time possible.
The software industry is ripe for the implementation of a policy of this nature. Organizations must prove beyond all doubt that the Nigerian software industry cannot provide the kind of software they need before they can be allowed to use software developed oversees.
Implementing this alone has the potential of creating thousands of new jobs for software developers and the various ancilliary services that will be needed to maintain their various local organizations.

I believe the following idea has the potential to break the current educational dead-lock and create massive a economic boost for Nigeria.

The main tenet of the idea is elucidated below. I will explain the reasons behind them after.

The government should guarantee loans by small micro-finance banks to prospective university students to study in Private Nigerian Universities

1. The loans should be given by Micro-Finance Banks because they are not big enough to easily circumvent the process for some higher order financial gimmick to make more money and further enslave Nigerians.
2. The money should not be given free of charge by the government because the government cannot afford it, Many states cannot even pay the Minimum wage
3. The loans should be for tuition at private universities because we want a private sector led explosion in education investment that can only be made if there is adequate demand.
4. The loans will mirror current student loans in the UK and the US

The genius of the education loans idea is that the construction of an additional 50 private universities in Nigeria will employ so much labor, create hundreds of thousands of new and sustainable jobs at the universities. Each university will demand an eco system of hostels, primary and secondary schools, hospitals, hotels, halls, restaurants, housing estates et cetera which will further create more jobs and lead to economic expansion.

Going by the current Jamb statistics an estimated 750000 students will not be able to secure admission to any university regardless of what scores they have because the amount of slots in the available Nigerian Universities are simply not enough.

We may even need more than 50 new private universities,

The government cannot and probably will not create any new University, ASUU is even going on strike because the government cannot meet the demands of the universities it is currently running.

We should come up with an economic theory that solves our problems rather than trying to adapt IMF/World Bank economic recovery theories that have not produced any success story anywhere although they have had up to 30 years to experiment.

The IMF/World Bank economic theories center around globalization as an inevitability and that countries like Nigeria should concentrate on supplying raw materials to the rest of the world e.g. Crude Oil, Agricultural products like cocoa, cotton et cetera while we should depend on countries like Germany for our Heavy equipment, Japan for our cars, India and the US for our software, China for our clothes and small electrical appliances et cetera.

This is exactly what Okonjo Iweala and the GEJ administration are pursuing by trying to deregulate most of the industries.

I believe privatisation has its merits, but when the real rewards of privatisation accrue to foreign banks like Goldman Sacchs and BNP Paribas through the trillion dollar commissions they earn for facilitating global trade to the detriment of communities like the Niger Delta then privatisation loses its appeal and is reduced to a method of extortion.

Based on the above premise, I believe youths must organise to stop the government from deregulating the price of petrol and direct the focus of the government to alternative ways of solving the petrol/diesel crisis that we have.

Alternatives include selling the refineries in Nigeria to Nigerians and ensuring that they are run efficiently enough to be able to sustain and even lower the current market price of petrol/diesel in Nigeria.

Do trade by barter with specific corporations to build extra refineries and electic power plants in return for a number of barrels of crude oil.

fixing the electricity problem in Nigeria will cut the demand for petrol by 25 - 50% as a lot of petrol/diesel is used to power generators as an alternative to PHCN

With the world on the brink of another economic recession as stated by David Cameron (British Prime Minister), it is evident that the current brand of capitalism has failed woefully.
The problem is that most people are consuming more than what they are producing and financial institutions are profiting terribly from the increase in consumption to the detriment of nations and the people of the world.

We in Nigeria are in a bad situation as the nations we want to borrow money from are themselves too neck deep in debt to listen to us except we present them with deals that they cannot refuse namely economic colonization or annexure which will almost exclusively benefit our lenders and leave little or nothing for us - the borrowers.

This is the time to break up the monopoly of large financial institutions. The bigger a financial institution the more share of the profit it must consume in order to be able to sustain itself.

Nigerians should start using medium sized, state or regional banks as opposed to the national behemoths we have today.

Another benefit of having smaller financial institutions is that the smaller they are, the harder it is for them to influence our politics to the detriment of the common man.

we must resist the urge to build our society on debt.

We must develop poilicies that allow us to concentrate on the real sector rather than on phantom financial services.

Companies that make most of their profits from activities that produce no real value should be taxed multiple times higher than small businesses that thrive on creating value.

A example of this would be to tax the profits of a stock brokerage firms 2 to 3 times higher than a poultry business because the poutry business produces real value (food) unlike the stock brokerage firm which thrives on the trading of phantom securities that it cannot guarantee.

Imagine if a poultry business sold packets of eggs that it couldn't guarantee to have the same food value you paid for 2 days later when you decide to consume it, We would be outraged, this is what happens in the stock market, yet no one seems to notice because of the desire to get rich quick without making any effort.

The capitalist idea of letting your money work for you is what has put the world into the economic crisis which we are all currently experiencing.
We must return to the era where real value was exchanged in the worlds markets as opposed to the casino like operations we have in the world's biggest markets (the stock markets).

In nigeria, we can start by placing a ban on the importation of unnecessary items so that local manufacturers can produce alternatives.

We do not have to consume something simply because it exists. We can do without most of the things that we consume today without any adverse effect.

Do we really need italian shoes? We can wear Nigerian made shoes
Do we really need to import biscuits? We can eat roasted yam and bean cakes (they are probably healthier)
Do we really need to import toothpicks? We definitely can produce them
Does everyone really need a car? We can decide to use public transport (they are cheaper and more efficient)
Do we really need to import furniture?

there are many other examples,

If GEJ thinks smuggling is a problem then he should tighten border security and place prohibitive import duties from 100 - 300% of the cost of the goods on foreign produced goods and see whether nigerians will not consume locally made products instead.
Opening the ports just makes the economy a dumping ground.

If china will not build a rail system for us because we bar imports from their country then so be it. We can learn how to create a rail system by ourselves and build it from raw materials found in Nigeria.

Indeed, if anyone holds us to ransom for something we cannot build then they can take a hike. There'll be someone willing to take crude oil for the same service, and if there is no one then we can wait 5 more years for a rail system, we have been surviving without a good one for many years.

We can learn to build our power plants by ourselves. We don't really need foreign investment. All we need is the will to produce.
India, banned importation of cars some years ago and now TATA, an indian automobile company is the producer of LAND ROVER vehicles.

It is global financial institutions that are lying to us that we cannot survive on our own because they will lose trillion dollar profits if we decide to stay on our own.

If we import only less than 1% of our population will enjoy the benefits, the rest will bear the brunt.

The irony of the matter is that the nations that produced the massive financial corporations themselves have become victims of their creation. The nations are neck deep in debt while the financial institutions are paying billion dollar compensation packages to their top managers.
Those nations are so subservient to the financial corporations they created that they preferred to go deeper into debt than to let the corporations suffer.

Let us take back our nation!!!
No more borrowing!!!
Let's start producing!!!

And please, let's read reports from IMF and world bank with a pinch of salt because as I said before, they cannot produce 1 success story and they've been around for decades. Let us use our common sense!!!

Imagine the amount of Jobs that will be created if we ban the importation of unnecessary products,
Imagine the ripple effects those jobs will have on the security of the nation,
Imagine the what we can do with the taxes the new employees will pay,
Imagine the effect on our universities if they are saddled with the task of Hi-Tech infrastructure projects,
More research
More univerisity jobs
A sense of purpose for our professors
More focused teaching, our students can see the effect of what they are learning,

These are the things that made America great after world war II, they seem to have collective amnesia brought upon them by relentless lobying from their financial power houses.

These are the things that can make NIGERIA great!!!

Imagine if 90% of the suits we have in Nigeria were designed and sewn in Nigeria,
Imagine the amount of Jobs that will be created in the textile industry,
Imagine the amount of new tailors that will be needed,

Is sewing a suit as complex as will justify a need to import from china?

We don't need to borrow money from any foreign bank to create a brand new textile industry,
All we need are thousands of tailors willing to sew, we have them
hundreds of small entrepreneurs willing to start small-scale textile factories, we have them,
raise the import duty on suits to about 300% of the cost price to create demand for the locally made suits,

What is stopping us? Political will
How can we overcome the hurdle we face? Organizing ourselves into a pressure group!

Well, I really don't understand what you mean by "introduce slavery"

Greatly reducing the remuneration of politicians is a very good idea. The problem is how we can effect the reduction in remuneration since politicians are in charge of setting the salaries of other politicians.

I believe one way is to organize continuous rallies at the National Assembly for a start until the total remuneration of senators and members of the house of reps is reduced to at least a quarter of the current value.

One of the major problems youths have in Nigeria is that many of us are too busy trying to make enough money to put food on the table that we cannot afford the time that is needed to organize or participate in protests. God Help Us!!!

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Pretty simple![/center]

ezeagu:

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Pretty simple![/center]

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I concur that we should have a sovereign National Conference or something of that nature in Nigeria so that there is at least a forum where everyone is represented and can air their grievances.

However, I do not see any benefit that will accrue from splitting the country. Politicians from all parts of the country are equally corrupt, In the west we have had the Ife-Modakeke crisis, we have Jos crisis between members of neighbouring communities, we have the Ijaw/Itsekiri crisis in the Niger delta,

Splitting the country will just exercerbate the ethnic intolerance we currently have.

At a time when the world is trying to come together, I do not believe breaking up Nigeria is a viable solution.

At any rate, non of the countries that were part of the former Yugoslavia are doing terribly well, one of them (kosovo) is even administered by the UN, that's modern colonial rule!

The following message was culled from edicolove's post in "The Govt Is wasting Nigeria's Wealth - El-Rufai"

The real problem is the structure of the country itself. The very fact that we are really not one country. Everything starts from there. How can you say GEJ for example should reduce cost of governance when we have a constitution that promotes

1. Federal Character
2. There must be 1 minster from each state. That means there must be 1 ministry to cater for one minster from each state. If you give a man from Yobe 10 naira, you must give another man from Ekiti 10 naira.
3. We are still fighting over oil money in 2011.

This is just to list a few. We really must sit down as a nation to sort out our oneness. If someone, for example, finds himself in the NNPC and he experiences all the northern domination there and he now finds an opportunity to loot, he will be more likely to succumb because he knows he cannot stop others that are doing it and he will feel he is doing himself. But in a country where people see themselves as one, that is less likely to happen. When people have a general sense of belonging, they tend to be less corrupt. Some of you might not agree with me, but the structure of this country is why everything else is fallen apart. There is no continuity in geovernment for example. A new government comes and tries to start his own thing completely abandoning all his predessesor has done. Just because he needs to favour his own people more.

The truth is people like El-Rufai can criticize all they but I don't see them pushing bills in the NASS that can fundamentally change these flaws. I would have expected people like El-Rufai to go to the senate and help make these changes but my problem with people like them is they do nothing but criticize because it is the most convenient thing to do. Imagine if Wole Soyinka was in the senate and pushing stuff? I don't ever like critics because they do nothing. They only criticize. We need men who can take action and push things through. I thought Ngige was going to shake the senate with reformation stuff. But the silence from the guy is deafening. I pray God give us reall leaders that can take the bull by the horn.

We have to look for a way to deal with the problem of Federal Charter,
One way to start is to redesign the federal charter to represent geo-political zones as opposed to representing states,
This way we'll have only 5 or 6 slots to fill based on the 5 or 6 geo-political zones we have.

Once the above is done then we can move on to merge ministries until they are less than 10,
With all the allocation that one ministry gets I believe it can tackle the job of 5 or 6 ministries by itself,

We should also push for the reduction of the number of senators and members of the house of representatives, I don't yet have any ideas on how we can implement this because we need to merge slots and that will mean that some senators will not come back to the house. It definitely will be an uphill task to get a sitting senator to sign into law something that may spell his removal from the house,

I also believe that like in JOS and Borno.The government should consider surveillance camera.I am saying this because i can assure that it would ordinarily give security materials as evidence and also help alert them of an impending attack.It is good that Abuja has gone all camera.But they should atleast place a few around the cities of Jos and Borno.
For me i think it would go a long way in allowing security individually ID mob actors and trace the cause/perpetrators of the attacks.So that blames/prosecution/hunt maybe made or security officers who take part or claim ignorance/negligence can be monitored.The same should also start across all cities of Nigeria.Before any violence even steps there.Peaceful or non peaceful.Attach priority to conflict areas and gradually deploy same in peace time states as no condition is permanent.In case things ever go wrong.A few Millions if honestly put to use could deploy this equipments in key areas and areas prone to security bridge until the states of Nigeria are all covered.
This could deter security personals who are on active duty from failing to act or respond to crisis promptly.Also it allows superior review of the situation for better management of the security to such security bridge in future.
Government should start collation of all data they have presently and gradually review them over time and upgrade them to minimize errors and false bios of Nigerians and foreigners.For instance,Ask all Universities,Secondary schools,WAEC,NECO,Hospitals medical,FRSC,Immigration,Civil service,Armed forces,LGA staff,State Government,Primary schools,hospital,hotel,employment/appointment documents,death certificates,association data,religious movement,INEC,NCC,censors,telecoms data,political parties,bank details and marriage data etc documents and begin to build individual profile of each and every Nigerian for now and then insist on long term mandatory documentation of persons in Nigeria.Putting all this can certainly reduce the lack of human profile by atleast 60% and give a good start.That single act can provide details for government to identify people to a large extent or relate persons to something,someone or somewhere to easily track wanted persons or predict there likely actions.
For me all this is do able and could be done in months.Think we have alot of IT professionals to build goods apps and deploy the needs for this.We have a large chunk of educated unemployed people.Get them working and put them on this project period.Within months you can do all the work.FG has the money.This can be done and subsequently it will only be managed over time and we do not expect another one be done again.We only then upgrade,review and add etc.

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All northerns must attend school until 16 yrs

Putting CCTVs in various places is a very good idea, and you are right we have the IT knowledge base to achieve it.

I would advice that we should engage our youths in the deloyment of the surveillance systems as this will kill 2 birds with one stone. We will be creating more jobs, for the local residents who would also be motivated to protect their environment, we'll be increasing our IT infrastructure and knowledge base and also providing better security alongside.

The remaining question is that of how to pay for such a large project.

My idea is that we can create a new economy around the project such that the project pays for itself.
One way to do that is to engage the residents of the affected communities in some sort of vigilante arrangement where instead of paying for local guards to mount watch at various posts they will pay for their sons and daughters to stand watch at designated control centers.

the community will be responsible for the sustenance of the security personnel.

A local police force could also be set up to support the surveillance team and bring complete security to the community

This highlights the need for community policing.

We should have state, and community police forces. One central police force cannot effectively police Nigeria.

In America, there is the FBI, CIA, NYPD and other state police forces and we have sherriffs that head local police forces. That's the tried and tested way to effectively police a nation.

That is one issue we as youths need to protest to the senate and house of representatives for. We should organize sit ins until the the legislative arms pass laws that allow for the creation of various police forces with different levels of jurisdiction.

On the issue of education for northern youths, the government must act decisively.

One great problem the north has is that of the almajiris who have no allegiance and no kind of family structure except that offered by fellow almajiris.
Whenever there is any uprising, mob action is responsible for what happens among the almajiris, whether they'll act as fuel for the crisis or not. More often that not, they will because they are naturally prone to violence due to their high level of deprivation.

My idea is for the government to create massive almajiri camps where the almajiris are free to learn at the feet of their masters. Begging on the streets is an outdated idea and if the senators from the north do not alow their children to beg then no one should be subjected to begging in the name of religion. I do not think the concept of begging is even supported by the Qu'ran. It may be allowed but it is definitely not a compulsory duty to beg.

In the almajiri camps there should be food and water and the Mallams who teach sermons should be held responsible if their sermons incite the youths into any form of violent action. All the almajiris should go through an identification process and any almajiri on the street that is not registered should be apprehended and sent to the closest camp for registration.

The state governments should be personally responsible for the almajiri camps and various NGOs should monitor the disbursement and use of funds allocated to the various camps to prevent the camps from becoming massive wastelands.

The EFCC should prosecute anyone involved in embezzling funds meant for the almajiri camps.

This way, the almajiris have a better life, have better education (whether arabic or western) and will not constitute a societal nuisance.

WIN-WIN for everyone,

1.corrupt politicians should be killed

2.support small / local businesses.

3.fix the Nigerian Police Force so that they can actually catch criminal and stop taking bribe

It would be really nice if we could get rid of all the corrupt politicians however they still have rights and the worst we can do to them (under the law) is to push for the EFCC to apprehend and prosecute them.

However civil groups can monitor politicians with a view to publishing their misdeeds. It will enhance the careers of the journalists that publish them while destroying the careers of the corrupt politicians whose names are published,

Supporting small and medium businesses is surely the way to go. One way to support indigenous businesses is to ban the importation of all unnecessary goods and services or at least tax them about 400% of their cost price to discourage imports.

Fixing the police force is definitely an herculian task because the rot is so deep and most policemen are psychologically battered. A better approach may be to create a parallel police force together with state and community police agencies. This way policemen from the Nigeria Police Force can undergo massive psychological reprogramming and worldclass training before they are allowed into any of the newly created police agencies.

The Nigerian situation is unique and peculiar as we have nothing working as they should, and instead of the constant bashing and non-stop complaining, why dont we suggest one thing( idea/policy) that we feel can make our nation better. I am sure as a result of Nairalands popularity, good/great ideas will find their way to appropriate authorities and hopefully it will spark a debate. Serious posts are encouraged, lets have a blueprint of ideas that may work for our unique land.

My one idea is that our legislators should be salaried like civil servants, I think this will to some extent ensure those seeking office are genuinely interested in serving the public.

The above was culled from a post by gamechange in the "what is the one change you would advocate to make Nigeria better" thread

Why do you folks need to start threads such as these? Don't we have enough of them littering Nairaland politics board?

@kobojunkie
please post the links of similar threads so we can find a way to merge them or direct traffic to the one with the most replies.

We start them because we really want to do something about fixing our nation and we are sick of just reading complaints.

I believe we all have a stake in Nigeria therefore we must all join hands to suggest ways to fix our nation.

On second thoughts, the more threads we have that posit solutions rather than complaints, the better for our nation because people will read solutions, refine them and people's dead hopes can be reignited to the point where we'll have a shot at changing our nation dramatically within a few years.

We need a weekly mandatory constituents day, where each elected official meets his/her constituents in a town hall setting. Question and Answer sessions and issues afecting locality will be raised and discussed.

At the end of each term served, a broadcast Q and A sessions need to be conducted to hold elected officials accountable to their manifesto/performance. This should be enshrined in our constitution. Failure to appear should be punishable by incarceration and forfeiture.

This hopefully will spur people to do the right thing while in office.

The town hall meeting will be a really good idea if it can be implemented.

Perhaps an addition to that will be the setup of a monitoring system in conjunction with the media so that lies can be easily detected and exposed.
The sessions could also be deemed to be as sensitive as court sessions where lies would be taken as perjury with a risk of jail time.

How can Nigeria get better? Nigeria is sick with two terminal illnesses called greed and wickedness. Nigeria is finished. Nigeria needs to break up A.S.AP peacefully or there will be violent war. Ife Ile ti gbogbo Yoruba ni.