₦airaland Forum

Caseless:


That could have been you, but you chose to please feminists watching the show by being an acerbic lady till you were disqualified. She was being tipped to win until someone who understands the game and saw her as a challenge made sure she tricked her into doing what she's known for; being unruly and confrontational, and was sent "packing".

Tacha save us your emotional message. Your supporters kept goading you that without you the show is boring. Need I remind you that you'll forever carry the tag of a disqualified HM and the world remember the winners more than the losers.

Who is this anumanu and who is deceiving you into believing.....you're of any relevance except constituting
a nuisance on this platform.

Beautiful transformation from garden to stream...more nature taking back what has always been it's own.

Did I Hear someone say attach Tacha to the entourage and their plight will come to light...

NFF and NFA do not recognize that sport hence the neglect and their association is not registered with the sport ministry.

philip0906:
The fastest man/woman in the world, dey this country (I can bet my life on that)...but their talents are rotting away. They are probably skatting on ikorodu road, sharing Dominos pizza handbill...

This country, na dream killer...The only thing I owe my kids, is to make sure they have first world citizenship. I won't make that mistake

Stake something of value your life wouldn't cut it..

Mama dey light skinned, pikin dark papa unknown..issorite

Baba wetin concern air hostess with village age group meeting.

I love my people jari

seunmsg:
There is nothing wrong with the news. Lawmakers always nominate projects through ministry or agency where they can easily get the money back. SGF is a big office with several agencies under it. When you breakdown the details, you will realize most of the constituency projects funds will be implemented by agencies under the supervision of the SGF and not directly by the OSGF. One popular agency they always use is the Border communities development agencies. If you check the details beyond the lumping together by Sahara reporters, you will understand better.

Stop justifying used tissue paper can be reused.

Thisis2raw:
That video footage was edited.
The hotel management is hiding something

Yes they are hiding something that is not for public view, they must ensure the privacy of their other patrons...it so happen that the video captured the image of a port Harcourt big boy coming out from one of the room with his side chick.

Wait ooh! What did we say we are breeding in this country as graduates..!!

So na woman carry people wey do dis kind thing to their fellow human for belle 9 months come givam booby to suck afterward.


Chisos!.

Mrcomedimatic:
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Lagos Zonal office, has arrested six suspected internet fraudsters in Lagos.

The suspects, Oluwaseyi Gabriel Obe, Omojuyigbe Paul, Olubodun Victor, Alade Amos Opeyemi, Harry Osaremesin [/b]and [b]Osaro Aganwonyi, were arrested during a sting operation in the early hours of today, October 3, 2019 at the Igando area of Lagos, following intelligence reports received by the Commission about their alleged involvement in the criminal activity.

Items recovered from the suspects at the point of arrest include mobile phones, laptops and a car.

The suspects will soon be charged to court.

Source: https://ngg.ng/2019/10/03/efcc-arrests-six-suspected-internet-fraudsters-in-lagos/

I no mention names ooh

Only in Nigeria waste lands will a grade A thug that leeches off other people's sweat be heralded a celebrity.

signature2012:
El rufai take a very urgent action on this..

Is El Rufai the police or the security agencies...or has the control or formation of armed security agencies left the exclusive list..?

GOFRONT:


Kogi state....Always in the News for the wrong reason...

Would you keep quiet! is there any state in the country where it is better off, you are not obligated to comment, if you cannot make sense.

nextLevel death....Buhari but why killing all the elderly animals in the country the other day a Chimpanzee succumbed to nextLevel in FUTO now its Osun's turn whyyyyyyyyy Buharrrrrri

If the attack had happened in Nigeria one blogger would have posted graphic pictures of the slain police officers online.

Mrop:
Controversial politician Family Kayode Ffk has reacted to a short clip of Nigeria's Ambassador to the U.S., H.E. Sylvanus Adiewere Nsofor walking with his stick unbalanced. The short clip has got many Nigerians talking. See more and watch the clip below

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3IK3t_n5ua/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Gist From Praizenews ; http://www.praizenews.com/who-did-this-to-us-fani-kayode-react-to-unbalanced-nigeria-ambassador-to-usa/

FFK I've missed you

Op Family kayode like seriously

How can a human being allow himself to grow this shapless, he even compounded the appearance with his 1950s coat and their host always appearing like a bird wanting to take flight with his shoulders abnormally raised.

Tomiwa69:
U won't see them shouting Biafra now.
They won't claim their ppl now.
Igbo from the yeast side

Are you this daft, because you have refused to travel outside that your squalor and in the abundance of your ignorance you think everyone down south apart from the yorubas is ibo.

Jisos! What manner of palliative is this, is it intended to pull out all the drive shaft of every vehicle that the owner is brave enough to attempt this trap of a road.

My brother don't make the mistake of accepting that offer, working with Chinese, Indian or Lebanese companies is tantamount to modern day slavery not only will they sap you dry the opportunity for growth or welfare package like health insurance, pension or festival allowances are almost nonexistent.

Forget about all those folks telling you accepting the offer afford you the opportunity for a starting point, no such thing exist with the companies run by those nationals I mentioned, not only will they waste your time they will so occupy you that you would barely have time for any other thing even search for better job.

My advice is keep searching for company with better condition of service or better still explore Avenue to self employ.

Very impressive, Nigeria is indeed blessed with ingenious minds all the country need is the right policies and conducive environment for these talents to blossom.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe, a serial high school distinction scholar, is also a holder of four master’s degrees, two doctorates in Management and Microelectronics, and in Electrical Electronics & Computer Engineering, specialising in Robotics and Neuromorphic systems, from the John Hopkins University in the United States.


Ndubuisi Ekekwe, a serial high school distinction scholar, is also a holder of four master’s degrees, two doctorates in Management and Microelectronics, and in Electrical Electronics & Computer Engineering, specialising in Robotics and Neuromorphic systems, from the John Hopkins University in the United States.

He is an engineering graduate of the Federal University of Technology (FUTO), Owerri.

He spoke with Business Editor, Bassey Udo, on how the marriage of technology and agriculture can reduce extreme poverty.

Excerpts:

PT: Despite its best efforts, Nigeria, and indeed Africa, has not been able to produce enough food her citizens. How can we make agriculture work for us?

EKEKWE: The simple challenge is that our environment has a lot of inefficiencies in our production systems, not just in agriculture, but across all other sectors. Agriculture occupies a significant place in our growth matrix.

Most of our citizens work in the agricultural sector. Our gross domestic product is heavily affected by agriculture. If we can fix agriculture, technically we can fix many things in Africa.

If we double our agricultural productivity, we can reduce extreme poverty by 2030. We cannot do this by scaling what we have been doing for centuries, which resulted in mass poverty in a community of farmers.

We must look for a new paradigm, by bringing a new technology to make our farmers think smarter, work more efficiently and be capable in utilizing factors of production in the agricultural business.

So, it is no more a case of the farmer going to buy his cutlass or hoe, but more of how he can scale his business systems in the agricultural space using technology.

The principle is simple: the farmer must be able to make decisions with certainty about what his farm wants, and not necessarily guesses of what our ancestors wanted, with no consideration to what the crops want.

Our ancestors made agricultural decisions on the hope that, because they offered sacrifices, the gods would give them a bumper harvest.

In the 21st century, if we can connect and have a battalion of farmers in our agricultural ecosystem, we can redesign the wellbeing of our citizens.

There is no Nigerian that is not connected to a family member at first or second level involvement in agriculture. So, if we fix agriculture, we can fix Nigeria.

PT: How do you fix Nigeria, practically, through agriculture?

EKEKWE: The only way we can make that happen is to make agriculture a business. We should not have farmers who are custodians of culture; who just go to the farm, because that’s a way of life. We should have farmers who go to the farm and make decisions to grow the bottom line. So, if a farmer goes to the corn, yam or cassava farm, he should make decisions that will affect the end-game of having a good yield at the end of the farming season.


If a farmer’s crop is not doing well because it is not getting enough water or other nutrients, how does he know before the harvest period?

This is where technology comes in. Technology will tell the farmer with certainty that his crops are not getting enough water, and the need to provide an irrigation facility to supply water, if there is no rain.

Or technology will tell you whether a farmer’s crops need nitrogen or not. Or whether the fertilizer supplied by the government is full of nitrogen phosphate. There are a lot of mismatch, because of working based on guess work.

But, we can bring engineering into the agricultural process by saying the crops do not really need nitrogen, but some phosphorous and potassium.

Technology will help the farmer to advice government that if fertilizer is to be sent to the particular region in the country, it should be the type that have more potassium and phosphorous, because that is what the crops there will benefit from.

When that is done, the farmer can add about 85 percent of the total yield from the farmland.

In that case, everyone is not doing things blindly. Decisions will be made based on data. That is one way to help the farmers.

There is also the element for the government. When farmers are given fertilizer, unfortunately some of them sell them. But, with technology, the farmer can make it easy for government to know within two weeks if the farmer does not use the fertilizer.

So, technology will make government not give fertilizer to farmers blindly without knowing whether the fertilizers are used or not.

Technology will tell the farmer the nutritional differential, either in phosphorous potassium, calcium or whatever the farmer needs in the fertilizer.

The technology will use the leaves of the plant to validate the changes that have taken place after the fertilizer was added by the farmer.

If there are 4 million farmers that government wants to support with 100,000 extension workers, it is possible that the output from them may not cover the total cost of those extension workers.

But, with technology, instead of using 100,000 extension workers, maybe 50,000 could be used.

With technology, one can stay in his office and monitor 2,000 farmers efficiently and effectively.

Technology will make it easy for the farmer to achieve marginal cost, which is the ability to serve the extra customer, as it turns down to zero.

With technology, most of the monies government is spending in agriculture will actually go into agricultural processing itself and not the mechanics of helping farmers, which is where so much money is spent, yet the farmers do not actually get enough.

We have seen how technology is working in companies’ logistics, where a cargo owner will stay in his office and see where his items are at any point in time.

The truck driver will also know how much money he’s being paid. There is an equilibrium point converging on a platform; bringing visibility, transparency and efficiency in the utilization of factors of production in the agricultural system.

PT: Can you say how technological applications can help agriculture?

EKEKWE: The technology I am talking about is called Zenvus, which is an electronic sensor in three different products.

The Zenvus Smart Farm is one that is put in the soil to collect information, like temperature, moisture, humidity, electro-conductivity of the soil.

If that data is sent through Wifi, GSM or satellite into cloud computing infrastructure to develop algorithm that will analyze all the data from the farm and used to tell the farmer what to do about his farm, it might tell the farmer when he does not have enough water in the farm for the crops and the need to irrigate the farm within a certain period of time. It will tell the farmer when to expect rainfall and other environmental conditions.

As the crops begin to grow, the farmer can read from the leaves what is happening with them.

If images of the leaves are taken using Zenvus Yield to analyze and get insights into how healthy the crops are. The farmer cannot see what is going on with his naked eyes. But, the technology will give indicators about the ingredients the crops are lacking, or a pest or disease that are attacking them.

When all the data from the vegetation and the soil are converged, the farmer can see a 360 degrees of the state of the farm. Based on that information, the farmer can say how, when and the best possible things he can do to improve yield in the farm.

It is an irony that a community of farmers, like in Nigeria, are hungry. That is what is happening in most communities in Nigeria.

Why it is that way is because the farmers are not effective in their agricultural systems. This is where the technology element is coming into play. Technology is not voodoo magic. It is more like guiding the farmer to have better yield.

Nigeria is one of the best countries in the world. We have a large expanse of arable land for agriculture. There are countries that want to farm, but don’t even have land or weather.

Now, if the farmer has produced the agricultural output and he wants to send it to the cities or factory, there are lots of leakages there. Unfortunately, we still have middlemen that are not playing by the rules.

For instance, the farmer can pack baskets or cartons of their products in trucks to supply to the buyers.

They farmer might be tracking the trucks conveying the products. But, this is not very effective, because someone might take off the items from the truck and still drive the empty truck to the destination the products should have been delivered and the owner will still be tracking the empty truck as if indeed the products were delivered.


We hear of cases where petroleum products meant for delivery to certain parts of the country are siphoned by the marketer into underground tanks and later diverted to other places, while the empty trucks with the tracking devices are driven to the place it was supposed to have been delivered.

But, the Zenvus Loci is different. It is a GPS with an in-built battery life that can last up to seven days without being connected to a power source.

If it is dumped in a container or bag for seven days, from his phone, the owner will know where the bag is.

If the farmer is shipping some farm equipment, and he wants to know where those items are at any point in time, he can do so with the technology.

So, if I have 50 suppliers of cassava to produce starch and I can predict that the supplies are coming within seven days, I can plan. These are technologies to help farmers in production.

There are also other forms of technology that help farmers to market their products as well as those to help in raising capital.

The Zenvus Manager is called the Electronic Farm Diary. A good small and medium enterprise (SME) entrepreneur, as a businessman, he has a book-keeping habit for goods that come in or the ones that have left the company.

Our farmers don’t think that way. But, the Zenvus Manager will help the farmer take care of that.

Just like electronic farm diary that records the number of hours the farmer or extension workers work in the farm in a day throughout the farming season.

The farmer will be able to determine the efforts put in by different people in production process, in terms of application of fertilizer and the cost.

At the end of the season, the farmer can determine the cost of inputs, to be able to know the price of the products to be able to break even.

There is also the Zenvus Capital, which is designed to allow the farmer share his farm data with a bank to stand him in a better a chance of being granted loans that would enable him to grow production.

The Zenvus Insure can also be useful for the farmer to insure his farm. There is the Zenvus Craft Fund and Zenvus Pricing for other services. There is also the Zenvus Markets, which is the technology that helps the farmer reach bigger markets for his products.


National Assembly members can also use the technology to track their constituency projects in their local communities. The GPS in the sensor will help locate the exact location the farms or projects are situated anywhere on earth.

There is also the Zenvus Boundary, which is a technology for surveying the farmlands.

If the farmer has the technology in his phone, if he walks round the perimeters of his farm and at the end presses the submit button, the technology will automatically take the GPS data and maps and super-imposes it on the Google Earth through the satellite, telling the farmer the exact location of his farmland. It will capture all features on the farmland, including trees and rivers.


PT: How affordable is this technology to the average farmer?

EKEKWE: It does not cost much. One does not need as much as N200,000 to have it. But, farmers can negotiate.

It is a device designed for four years, but the farmer can use it for seven farming seasons.

The technology was not designed individual farmers to buy. We see it as a farm input, just like the way government gives fertilizers to farmers. We want government to give the technology to farmers as they give fertilizers. As seedlings are being given to cooperatives, the technology should be given along. This is an essential agricultural input of the 21st century.

What’s the essence of giving the farmer fertilizer if he does not understand the need for it, or how to use it? We can remove guess work in agriculture and replace it with data with technology.

PT: Are you having discussion with policy makers and decision makers in government to have their buy in on the use of this technology?

EKEKWE: We are discussing with some members of the National Assembly, the Central Bank of Nigeria, Ministry of Agriculture and such agencies. We are hoping that there will be a fundamental shift from the past where agriculture was pursued with guess work.


PT: How did you come by this technology?

EKEKWE: Well, let start from my background. I am a village boy from Ovim in Isikwator Local Government Area of Abia State. I went to the Federal University of Technology, Owerri before moving to the United States where I developed a lot of competencies in electrical electronics engineering from the John Hopkins University in the United States.

I build Robots that operate on human beings. I have a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering, and specialize in Robotics. I also build micro-processors, the type that is essentially neuromorphic systems designed to emulate human biology.


Then, I resolved to take a little bit of my time to help my local community. I took time to understand the farming system in my community. As a child, I grew up with my grandmother. I used follow her to the farm during the planting seasons.

Having been involved in the development of technology, I said how can I use my knowledge of technological advancement, particularly my knowledge of the human system, to solve the problems in the farming system in the country?

I received the support of the U.S government through the USAID in the development of the technology. I deliberately did not want to raise capital from investors, since the technology was not for money making, but to help build the community to give the people a better life.

We have been working on developing new crop models. I am happy about the impact it is creating already.

I am hopeful that if every young person working in the agriculture space can double farming productivity, extreme poverty will be reduced.


There is no other way to have a catalytic impact in the life of our citizen than agriculture, because everyone is connected to it.

I was still in the Primary School in 1986 when the cassava mosaic disease broke out in the country.

But, it took Nigerian agricultural researchers less than six months to create a new variety of cassava stems that was resistant to the mosaic disease.

There was a clear famine that was coming to the country if that was not achieved. That disease affected one of the country’s most staple food crops. So, there is really nothing this country cannot do if means to. That is why I always say $1trillion economy is possible if we want.


https://www.premiumtimesng.com/

Lagos was an orderly urban environment 70 years ago. This was the case from the 1950s, when the city was a federal territory through to the 1960s when it became federal capital – a status it held until 1991.

The foundations of orderliness for any city are planning and management. Lagos had this in place in the early days. The city was governed by an elected Lagos City Council, Nigeria’s oldest, established in 1900. It was governed according to colonial legislation, particularly the 1948 Building Line regulations and the 1957 Public Health Law.

The city was much smaller and was made up of Lagos Island (Eko) which included Ikoyi and Obalende neighbourhoods. It was a beautiful environment that featured Portuguese, Brazilian, and British Victorian architecture. Its [streets were clean and tree-lined]
(http://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/57](http://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/57). Urban crime was virtually non-existent.

Governance standards declined when political control of Lagos, and the rest of Nigeria, came under military rule between 1966 and 1979 and again from 1984 to 1999. Proximity of the two capitals – federal and state, respectively – in the Ikoyi and Ikeja neighbourhoods of the same conurbation, put more pressure on the city. In the 1970s the city expanded to link up previously distinct areas such as Ikeja, Mushin, Orile, Ojo, Oshodi and Agege.

The result was increased pollution, congestion and wear on infrastructure. This was particularly true between 1970 and 1991.

But things have changed. Efforts have been made to revitalise the city in terms of a cleaner and greener environment, improved road and water infrastructure, urban bus system and waste management, overhaul of security and consultation with citizens through town hall meetings.

Nevertheless, big challenges remain. The city still has far too many slums and squatter settlements, it lacks a functioning public transportation system, proper traffic management, efficient waste disposal, sanitation, adequate potable water supply and routine road maintenance.

Lagos also suffers because of problems that afflict the country. There isn’t regular electricity supply, and there are high rates of poverty and unemployment. And, as elsewhere in the country, many residents don’t comply with laws on building, traffic and sanitation.

The history

Lagos was affected positively as well as negatively by Nigeria’s 1970s emergence as a major crude oil producer.

On the upside, there was investment in infrastructure. This included the building of the second bridge linking the Island, the Eko Bridge, and re-building of the first (colonial) Carter Bridge. The third and longest bridge was commissioned in 1990.

These bridges were aimed at improving accessibility between the two islands (Victoria and Lagos) and the mainland. But, uncontrolled commercial development on the islands has produced persistent traffic bottlenecks. This has been worsened by the lack of a public transport system.

Two developments added to pressures on the city. Its population burgeoned while infrastructure lagged behind. This period marked the beginning of the decline of planning for the city. The worst periods were the late 1980s and the 1990s. As architects Rem Koolhaas and Kunle Adeyemi noted in an interview, these were Lagos’ darkest times:

"Lagos, in the 1990s, was the ultimate dysfunctional city and an example of what happens to a society where the state is absent. At that point the state had really withdrawn from Lagos; the city was left to its own devices, both in terms of money and services."

The city was being governed by the military. But it was not cut out for governance, had no accountability and couldn’t care less about planning and environmental issues. As a result it routinely disregarded existing regulations.

In the 1990s, for instance, the largest public park in Lagos – the old, colonial 10-hectare Victoria Park in Ikoyi – was sold as residential development land. The waterfront of the Lagos Cowrie Creek in Victoria Island was also sold for commercial development, effectively blocking direct public access to the waters and a picturesque view of Ikoyi.

The collapse of zoning all over Lagos also led to residential neighbourhoods such as Victoria Island and southwest Ikoyi being converted for commercial use. The military had no reasoned response to Lagos’ urban challenges. Instead, it took the decision in 1975 to establish a new capital in Abuja.

This move, which finally came to fruition in December 1991, left Lagos forlorn.


The positives

Positive changes have taken place.

For example, over the past 15 years the authorities succeeded in raising more taxes using money to restore basic infrastructure, expand public services and strengthen law enforcement.

Research shows that the commitment to reform the city was driven by electoral pressures as well as elite ambitions to construct an orderly megacity. The return to democracy helped to make these changes possible by enabling an elected government to work in the people’s interest.

Improvements includes public transport and the reclamation and greening of previously disused and misused spaces below Lagos’s many flyovers, bridges and interchanges. In addition, roads have been fixed and pavements built. In some parts of the city there is potable water supply and blighted residential and commercial areas have been rebuilt.

But, given decades of neglect, a great deal still needs to be done.

What’s broken

One of the biggest problems is the lack of coherent and integrated development .

Another major issue is flooding which Bongo Adi, a Lagos based environmental expert argues, hasn’t been decisively tackled.

Nor have improvements over the past decade impressed everyone. As Femi Akintunde argues, Lagos remains deplorable, rowdy, unsanitary, and a city of the urban poor. Akintunde is the managing editor and CEO of Financial Nigeria International Limited.

Lagos still ranks low on liveability. Its governance deficits are acutely felt by the poor, but also touch wealthier residents.

For these issues to be fixed, the standard of governance has to improve.

Who should run the city?

There are two potential authorities: Lagos state, sitting at the top, and the municipal authorities which interact with the grassroots.

The problem is that Lagos city isn’t really run by the city authorities. But effective urban governance should be “bottom-up”, making it possible for the people to take increasingly greater control over their lives.

In addition, being run from the top means that local capacity is being stunted. This has implications for sustainable change. As international fellow at International Institute for Environment and Development Jorgelina Hardoy says,

"sustainable development in cities largely depends on the actions and capacity of local governments."

Whoever takes charge should recognise the necessity of getting residents’ buy-in before implementing modernisation policies. The city can’t develop by leaving its people behind.

Also, city planners should not plan for only the rich to the exclusion of the poor and disadvantaged. While accepting that slums and informal settlements have to be tackled, my research recommends a policy rethink that should involve


"enabling strategies which fully address the rights of people who are illegally settled on public land."


https://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/travels/355516-lagoss-chequered-history-how-it-came-to-be-the-megacity-it-is-today.html/amp/?

The number of foreign nationals available for them to assault have reduced they've now turned on each other even on national TV...Issorite .


Diswan na Cheaters South African version.

Buhari the worst kind of plague to befall Nigeria, this is the kind of legacy that herdsman is bequeathing to Nigeria

Who is diswan deceiving...