This came article came out in 2010. Is there an updated version of this?

Naija is sleeping,while countries are moving

;d ;d ;d

You know what Ghana has that Naij doesn't? Good people with sense.

You can already see that ugly Yoruba ego pipping up and talking crap in this thread about "Igbo people are this" and "Ghana is that".

I mean I know Igbo people can be fast but if you were surrounded by idiots who couldn't see past their immediate wants (wants, not needs) wouldn't you want to play them for fools too?

I've lived in Lagos 18 years left for another six to study abroad and come back and nothing has changed. Sure we got a new bridge from V.I to Ikoyi and sure Yabba isn't as rowdy as it once was and sure we've got the Lekki Epe expressway and sure there are a lot more foreigners strolling around the place like Lagos is supposed to be a tourist destination or some Poo, but the people are still the same.

You either have people who want a free ride and can't be bothered to do jack squat, people who just want to do shakara and opress others with what they have or people who demand your respect without doing anything to earn it. And the main offenders are YORUBA. It's bleeping ridiculous.

It's so bad that if I were on road with a Blackberry now and it got stolen from me the person who stole it won't SELL the phone but KEEP it. Despite the fact that they make a living selling pure water and PROBABLY NEED THE MONEY.

Nobody thinks ahead here. Nobody thinks about the bigger picture. Everyone just wants their puny little egos stroked.

I'm Yoruba by the way but I might as well have been born Hausa or Igbo as I don't think with my ego.

There's too many puffed up people who want to matter but aren't willing to do what it takes.

And don't get me started on the people who rise from the gutter to a position of power and fthrow sympathy out  the door.

bleep this country jare it ain't going nowhere long as people remain dumb.

Its good news for Ghana, but is that any reason for Nigerians to behave so irrationally?

Ghana is the fastest growing economy in the world, okay good for them.

Do you think any other country in the world is overreacting to this news and using it as an excuse to be abusive to their own country? Even though according to this list they are not in the 1st position.

At least for once let Nigerians stop being so irrational and emotional over everything. It makes us look so immature like a small child throwing a tantrum all the time.

Well done Ghana, just congratulate them and move on, no need to throw insults at your own country at the same time.

^^^^ pffft whatever!

Never been patriotic, so abuse I shall hurl.

Think about it: as an ambassador, President or Minister - with a job description that has you flying out to other nations - who arrives in places like the UK, Switzerland and co where THINGS WORK time and time again: how can you return to your own country and feel proud of it?

How can you steal money inspite of it?

It doesn't make sense.

I'm not sentimental about things like nationality, my dawg, I'll call a spade a spade and a shitty country a shitty country.

People wanna move forward but there's too many fat ugly egos in the way.

The Unpatriotic Nature of some Nigerians is really Startling. They forget that Charity begins at home. No wonder they are so hated in many African Countries.

God Bless Nigeria

@ Jungle drummer, you know what, if you had returned to Nigeria after 6 years and instead went somewhere other than Lagos maybe you would have seen at least some sign of progress.

Nigeria is not made up of Lagos, Lagos and Lagos, there are things happening elsewhere in Nigeria you know. It is unfair for you to talk about Lagos and interchange it with the whole country.

Look at how Calabar has transformed itself and is still going from strength to strength in their own way.

Why should that get lost in the obsession with Lagos? Within the last ten years there has been so much growth in many sectors in Nigeria and that should be mentioned too.

Jungle dreamer, anybody who has been part of a country where things work, knows fully well that it is a collective effort.

After a few days in Nigeria you realize the problem is the population also. If Nigerians had different ideals and character when compared to their leaders, Nigeria would be a very different place. In fact we would not even be having this conversation.

Nigerians are obsessed with the end result and are far too unwilling to do much to bring it about.

You ask how a governor can go to UK or Switzerland and come back and steal?

It is precisely because they are unpatriotic and have never been patriotic just as you describe yourself.

You only work to make a country work when you want to see it improve.

You say you have the right to hurl abuse? Fine, they are hurling their own abuse on Nigeria, but theirs is financial.

The biggest lesson anybody can learn about any country they say "works" is to look into their history their choices and most importantly their mind set.

If you go to Ghana you will notice they are affectionate toward their country, they encourage pride in it.
That is even though they too travel to the UK and Switzerland and know in many many ways Ghana too lacks what they have.

Man, londoner, abhosts, others: I don't know what to tell you guys.

I guess I'm kinda frustrated, because fixing things isn't going to be easy as it involves  

(1) changing people's mindsets and (2) doing away with certain cultural quirks (respecting "Levels", for one).

As someone who's always been an outsider looking in it's always been clear to me that The People not just The Government are to blame.

It is an incredibly vicious cycle: you can help people but the side effect is that they'll depend on you and eventually come to see it as being their "right" and take it all  for  granted (that ego again).

You can do nothing and the side effect is that you're only adding to the problem.

In a place where there are as many churches as there are banks why are the morals so shit?

Because moral education as well as proper education is the only solution I can see.

But when the well off and middle class openly show their disgust towards the poor the line between who's right and wrong blurs gon.

SO where do we start?

^^^^ I can understand the frustration we all have it. Maybe the easiest step is to stop raining abuses on our country, especially in the midst of foreigners.

We have to investigate what is going on in Nigeria, because with all the negatives there are some very encouraging and positive things going on there, but they get very little attention. Even when there is good news we find a way to make it seem a negative, maybe we should stop doing it.

It helps to make us rational beings, to be balanced. Then we can be productive.

We have so many countries in this world have been through the same stages of development (or lack of) as Nigeria, it is well documented how they turned things around.

The road we say we want to travel is well trodden by others. We don't need to reinvent the wheel.

I am yet to see or read of any nation, country or civilization who have improved by abusing themselves or allowing others to abuse them.

I FEEL HAPPY WHEN PEOPLE KNOW THE TRUTH, SAY IT AND STAND BY IT.JUST CAME BACK FROM GHANA LAST DECEMBER 2011 AND THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION I SAW COMPARED TO THE LAST TIME I WAS THERE IN YEAR 2006 WAS SIMPLY UNBELIEVABLE.APART FROM THE ISSUE OF POWER WHICH CAN NOT IN ANYWAY BE COMPARED TO WHAT IS OBTAINED IN NIGERIA,THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER FACTORS THAT MAKES GHAHA A GREAT COUNTRY. AN AVERAGE GHANA TO BE CANDID IS FRIENDLY, LOVING LAW ABIDING.I SAW WHAT I CAN DESCRIBED AS SENSE OF NATIONAL PRIDE IN AN AVERAGE GHANAIAN WHICH YOU CAN SEE IN THE WAY THEY WILL PRODUCE WRIST BANDS,SHOES, BEEDS VESTS AND SEVERAL OTHER ITEMS WITH THE COLOUR OF THEIR NATIONAL FLAG.AN ILITRATE GHANIAN COMMERCIAL BUS DRIVER WILL GET TO THE TRAFFIC LIGHT AT 2:00AM AND WILL STOP TO OBEY THE TRAFFIC LIGHT EVEN AT MID-NIGHT WHEN THERE ARE NO POLICEMEN AROUND AT ALL AND NO VEHICLE COMING AT OTHER SIDES OF THE ROAD.MOVEMENT IS 24HOURS ALL OVER WITH NO ONE TO MOLEST YOU AT ALL.I ALSO NOTICED THE INFLUS OF MANY WHITES IN GHANA WHO ARE NOW GETTING MARRIED TO THE GHANIANS.A WHITE MAN WILL JOIN THE SAME BUS AND SIT BESIDE AN AVERAGE GHANAIAN WITHOUT ANY SUPERIORITY COMPLEX. IN GHANA, BOTH BLACK AND WHITE RENTED SHOPS SIDE BY SIDE AND TRADE TOGETHER. I CAN GO ON AND ON TO SAY A LOT ABOUT GHANA BECAUSE IT IS A PLACE I HAVE BEEN SEVERALLY.EACH TIME I RETURNED TO NIGERIA AND SEE THE WAY THINGS ARE WITH NO SIGHS OF EVER WANTING TO PUT THINGS ARIGHT LIKE OTHERS, I AM FORCED TO THINK THAT NIGERIA IS AN ACCURSED NATION.UNFORTUNATELY ENOUGH,MANY OF OUR RULERS NEVER STOPPED VISITING GHANA ON DAILY BASIS WITH LOTS OF THEIR CHILDREN FLOODING GHANAIAN SCHOOLS AS IF GHANA IS U.K. OR THE U.S. IT IS A PITY THAT A COUNTRY SO MUCH BLESSED LIKE NIGERIA IS SO UNFORTUNATE TO HAVE A POPULATION OF 85% ANIMALS AND 15% HUMAN.

Well, I beleive the abuse is necessary, Londoner.

No one begins to think that they've got the short end of the stick until they've compared themselves to someone else.

Things ain't getting better. People don't fully believe yet that it's been a long time coming. Stuff like good roads and constant electricity is still a dream to many who in the back of their minds believe they won't get to see those things in their lifetime (at 25 yrs of age I'm one of them).

No point adopting civilization halfway. it's either jungle or metropolis or at the very least a symbiotic coexistence of the two.

Not "UBA Lekki Phase 1 Branch isn't open because NEPA has taken light" (WTF)

India has it's own space station and rocket for fucksake. We don't even have common electricity to power one measly bank's computers.

And we should be proud because why?

Take the abuse and let it make you angry I say! Feel bad about the way things are!

It'll make you question things at least. Which is the first step towards progress.

Oh and I disagree about govenors stealing despite visiting well-run countries because they are unpatriotic. If I had access to the amount of money paid in tax by nigerians you best believe I'd be turning patriot pretty quicky.

This whole ambassador thing is like linking up staring with you going over to a girl's place (which would always be neat and tidy). The day will come when she'll want you to invite her over to yours and you best believe you'd want it spic and span if there's going to be any chance of play in the future (with her OR her friends ).

These guys are just silly and don't care about how they look IMHO.

No matter how ghana be, they can never be better than Nigeria, what are you guys talking about, ??

Jungle dreamer, if you believe abuse is necessary, fine. But far to many Nigerians do this in place of criticism which leads to action to change what they complain about.  Maybe you don't believe in making change happen, but rather beleive endlessly recounting the obvious, what change has that brought about so far?

Of course a governor is comfortable seeing what is happening in Nigeria, while carting of the fund because he/she is unpatriotic.

Which country in that you see as "working" does not have a good amount of patriotic people as part of their population and political classes.

USA, erm nah
UK, erm nah
China, erm nah
Ghana, erm nah


Please name the countries in your list of working countries full of unpatriotic members of government and populace I would like to see them.

In fact one of the first things that come to mind in the countries above are the people, they all have a story of how the people, not just the government have contributed to their so called success, do you think Nigeria will be the one country to reinvent the wheel?

There is no way any person can be patriotic towards his or her country and treat her the way politicians do in Nigeria.

You and I both know that patriotic is not a word we would associate with any of the thieving governors, so why the pretense?

The truth is, if you do not have any positive feelings towards Nigeria you would not work in her best interest if you had access to the funds. Afterall, human being usually find it almost impossible to work in the best interest of someone or something they dislike.

@Londoner

There is a great truth in what you said. There is no way a country will become great without its citizens being patriots. When citizens of a country are so patriotic, they work so hard to improve it in all aspects.

Look at USA, most of them display their patriot through all aspect( sports, cloths,etc). Look at Canada, UK, Germany, etc. I was once chatting with a Nigerian in the midst of about 20 foreigners. He was shouting ' Nigerians and everyone in Nigerians are fools. Their brains are dead. Nothing moves forward. They act like stone age men." When I asked him what has done/is doing to fix Nigeria. He said " Who cares, besides why should they wait for me to fix it". The foreigners were laughing. That was my worst embarrassment.

What is happening in Nigeria is exactly what happened to China before Japan invaded them. Most of them as of the time only cares about their ethnicity and this gave the Japanese a great advantage to invade China.

But look at China today, almost everyone is working hard to change the face of their country.

As for me, Nigeria is never a country and anyone that think otherwise is deluding him/herself. The three main ethnics group in Nigeria (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba), all has the population of Ghana. Their (Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba) has their own different culture, language, writing, etc. Again, English as the main language. Tell me which part of the world you will see such scenario.

Tell me how you expect a country to move forward when some people in power will make stupid rules in order to hinder the progress of another ethnic groups. Tell me how you expect a country to move forward when people vote not because of quality of the person but because he/she is from their own ethnic group. Tell me how you expect a country to move forward when in this time of age, the people in power don't know the importance of "ELECTRICITY".

Imagine a country where the ministry of education children schooling abroad. A pure case of leader not leading by example.

For Nigeria to progress, an equal opportunity should be put into law. No politician should earn more than 200,000 naira a month. If they don't want the job, they should leave it.

The situation in Nigeria sometimes makes me think that breaking up Nigeria is the best option to move the country forward. Everyone will focus on their own issue.

Way to go Ghana

I think we are too negative in naija. It is really sad.

okeyxyz:

thank you bros for this post, i thank you b'cos you'v taken time  to give details on which you base your judgement,unlike every other comment so far on this thread, you have given a brief analysis & the points are reasonably differentiated.

why is it that nobody so far has asked about what data & factors on which this report is based? this seems to be a general character of nigerians & that is why we continue & shall continue(unless we wake up) to regress. we never ask questions concerning progress, instead we are busy shouting ghana this!!, ghana that!!,  blahblablah, wasting time. guys, pls ask questions & be educated.

it is good news that ghana's economy is growing, but as long as this report does not give us a breakdown(at least a summary) of the factors that has contributed this growth, then i can summarize that it's all words in the wind. what have we learnt from this report? what can we praise or criticize? what objectives can we set for ourselves as a lesson from this report? NOTHING!!! because it has told us nothing.