gift07: My application is still under review for over a month now! Wondering if I'm d only one left

Me tooo ohh

Pls Oga Segcy, will appreciate if you can forward the Eurolux contact to my mail - suan2@yahoo.com Thanks a million for your prompt response.

segcy.moor:


...u can get it at orile

Thanks a ton

Pls Segcy moore, where did your client get the designed balcony rails from? The balcony looks cute.

Pls can you send the prices of your Security doors, Pvc laminated doors and Kitchen doors.
to suan2@yahoo.com

pls want to know if you railings. if u do, at what price per mtr?

Good tiling work there. Vito well done and more grease to ur elbows. Please will like to know how much it cost to plaster the entire house. i.e materials and labour. How much did the tiler charge per square meter? Expecting ur kind reply as usual.

can u pls send d details to suan2@yahoo.com

You haven't fully communicated what you are advertising by giving us the features.

Can you please, let us know the product being advertised here.

Thank you

can you please let"s have some pics of what you are writing about. It will help to make informed decisions

Tony, Pls can u send your quote to my mail for the roofing of 535m2. my mail is suan2@yahoo.com. Very urgent pls

need a 2008 Honda Element. Reply to suan2@yahoo.com

Thank you Chief Spyder for that information on the cost of the decking

Good day Oga Spyder. Please is it possible to know the cost of materials that finished the decking you just completed? The estimates will be very helpful sir. Thanks for being there for your students. I will truly appreciate it.

Congrats OO Honorable Sanusi. The great wise man. Why N25m to Madalla Bomb victims and N100m to Kano? Trying to save your face? God is watching o.

Sorry for the error. Engineer not enfineer.

steo:

There you go Annysis,
2 tons of 16mm
4 tons of 12mm
1 ton of 10mm

hope this helps and good luck with your building!

Thanks Steo. I've got what I'm looking for. The enfineer on site has used 4tons of 16mm for beams only while 3.5tons of 12mm is there for the laying. He was telling me that it may not be enough and I told him to turn himself to rod may be we'll have countless tons on site. So far we have a total of 4tons of 16mm, 3.5tons of 12mm and a ton of 10mm for the decking. Going by the lessons learnt here from the only honorable Chief Spyder, I felt that the rods are getting too much. Though the site is in Lekki. I did the purchase myself directly from the company and so the excuse of undercutting in purchases does not occur in this matter at all.

I will also appreciate the contributions of the gurus in the house in this matter. Possibly I'm over reacting.

Thanks again Steo and Lord Spyder for the reply to my mail.

Thanks a ton Steo.

steo:

3 bedrooms en-suit and a separate toilet is exactly what I have in my apartments. According to my engineer and cousin who is a property manager, apartments of such rents faster and at a higher rate. I had that 2 toilet idea initially, but was advised otherwise.

That squatter/subletting issue is taken on-board. This is where who you rent your apartment to becomes critical, I can now see why some landlord carefully select their tanants.

Steo, thanks for your contributions to this wonderful thread by Chief Spyder. So interesting we'r doing the same building design with all rooms of both the three bedrooms and five bedroom duplex ensuit. Pls will like to know how many tons of 16mm was used for the beams, how many tons of 12mm was spread on the decking. I need this info from you cos like Fhemmmy says "still learning". Will be grateful for your response.

Beautiful website. Pls kindly send the catalog and prices for the building materials, sanitary wares and kitchen cabinets. My email is suan2@yahoo.com

What a nation. Lord have mercy

NIGERIA'S MOMENT OF HALF-TRUTH - OccupyNigeria MUST BE MORE THAN FUEL SUBSIDY REMOVAL!
by Enuff Said on Monday, January 16, 2012 at 3:22am

SUMMARY: The representatives of the Government have been forced to admit that there has been rampant corruption in the management and exploitation of the fuel subsidy regime. They even went as far as naming fellow members of the Economic Management Team as culprits. Yet, with such obvious corruption, one wonders where the EFCC has been all this while. How come that EFCC never even adverted its attention to this industry? Is EFCC ever capable of fighting corruption if it could avoid the oil sector throughout the 10 years of its existence? Or is it correct that EFCC is actually irrelevant as far as fighting corruption is concerned? What lessons are the Government, the people and the world to learn from the uprising in Nigeria? They were supposed never to be united on anything. Yet, they have occupied the streets and cities of Nigeria for 4 days without any sign of getting tired soon.



MAIN: If the Occupy-Nigeria uprising achieves nothing else, it would reveal to the average Nigerian the fact that the leaders of Nigeria are mostly corrupt. For me, it confirms what I told the world in March of 2011 right from underground cell where the same people had locked me up for 150 days in violation of their own constitution.



In case you forgot, on March 21, 2011, I managed, with the help of people I cannot disclose their identity, to smuggle out a statement to the world. In that statement, I warned all Nigerians and the world at large that most of those who held public offices in Nigeria are “the real criminals, rubbing the country blind”. I spoke on strong authority as the lawyer for Nigeria in the United States for nearly 10 years. I saw many strange things in the normal course of business. I was severally pressured to join the club in the looting frenzy. But I never agreed to participate because even a blind person could tell that a time would come soon when these looters would be called upon to account for their activities and they would not be able to do so.



What astonishes me the most as I have watched events unfold in the streets of Nigeria in the past 4 days is realizing that many Nigerian leaders were not only criminals and corrupt, but also daft. How could President Jonathan allow the shenanigans around him to land him into such a complicated spot as what is on the ground today? How far did they expect the lies to carry them? The problem was never the subsidy regime. There is always one in every country. US and European Union subsidize some commodities or services for their citizens. Indeed, even the Nigerian officials are not saying no to subsidy. They just wanted to place it somewhere else, thereby undermining the sense of urgency they preached. The single most serious problem with Nigeria’s fuel subsidy regime is the criminality and corruption carried out by the officials of the Nigerian Government all the way to the presidency. Note that we are not talking of ordinary corruption. Rather, it had gotten to levels where we could call it major economic sabotage or treasonable corruption.



As a mark of dramatic irony, those officials who had set out in the last days to justify the withdrawal of subsidies on fuel had blamed it on the high level of corruption. Yet, they could not, even at the moment of half-truth, be candid with the Nigerian people. In a desperate moment of his life, the Central Bank Governor wrote a long article and blamed Otedela for corruption in the fuel business and tried to use such charge to overcome his credibility deficit with the people. But what a shame! We all know that the Central Bank Governor never took any meaningful step to investigate Otedola for corruption. We also now know the position of Otedola on the matter, as revealed in the Wikileaks. Also, we know that Otedola, the Central Bank Governor, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Petroleum are all members of the much touted, but incompetent, Economic Management Team. And do not forget that the President is the Chairman of that team, with the Vice President as the Vice Chairman. So, why are they fooling around?



Nigerians also now know that the subsidy regime, as problematic as it had always been, remained relatively manageable until the moment that Jonathan became the President. The big question should have been for an explanation of how the cost of subsidy jumped from about 250 Billion Naira to over one Trillion Naira in one year. I recall that morning when Senator Bukola Saraki of Kwara State drew the attention of the nation to this extraordinary jump. One realized immediately that the Pandora box was about to be opened. If the question had pressed further, the truth would have emerged sooner. But this Government, not wanting the question to go further, quickly moved to implement the fuel subsidy withdrawal. The reason the subsidy regime failed is that this administration abused it and used it as source of slush funds for all manner of things and personal enrichment.



If Nigerians were to learn the truth about the behavior of those in Government, the country would burn. And back to the lessons of the Occupy-Nigeria uprising: It is no longer about subsidy removal. It is about accountability and transparency in governance. Nigerians must now use the opportunity of this movement, which President Jonathan unwittingly delivered to them, to demand to hold public office-holders accountable. They should ask each Minister in the Government to declare his or her interest in local or foreign businesses with interest in the oil industry. He or she will be deemed to have interest if any family member or close associate of his or hers has such interest. Such basic test will reveal that most of the top Government officials seeking to withdraw fuel subsidy actually stand to receive tens of millions of dollars from such subsidy withdrawal within the first year.



What Nigerians must understand is that Nigerian Government officials would not undertake to perform any task unless they stand to benefit personally from such task. If you want to know where the Minister is getting millions of money from, just look at what government projects his ministry is pursuing. So it is with the fuel subsidy withdrawal business. It is a common knowledge to those of us who have worked closely with them that Nigerian Government officials never, never act in the interest or for the benefit of the country. They act only for their own personal benefit. I make no exception here. And if any Minister or Governor or Director in the Government disagrees with me, I only need one week to show the world how he steals or plans to steal millions of dollars of public funds.



A second important lesson from the Occupy-Nigeria uprising is that the Arab Spring has the potential of turning into a Nigerian Spring. Everybody recalls how President Jonathan had said last year that there could not be Arab Spring in Nigeria. What a naïve and uninsightful mindset! If he had been a better student of history, he would have known that none of the Arab leaders expected the sort of revolutionary developments that exploded upon them last year. Even a fortune teller could never have guessed that Hosni Mubarak would be standing trial today in his country or that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would be dead in the hands of rebels few weeks after declining the offer for him to leave Libya alive. Nigerian leadership did not realize that the most common characteristic of a revolution is that it is never planned and hardly ever predictable. Considering the benign ways in which game-changing uprisings started in other places, this sudden withdrawal of fuel subsidy is actually a big slam akin to throwing a fireball into a pool of gasoline. There is a distinct possibility that reversal of the subsidy decision tomorrow morning would not be able to get Nigerians quiet again. They now need to know more about the dirty ways of their leaders.



WHERE WAS THE EFCC?

It is remarkable that Nigerians would be learning about the massive corruption in the oil industry over these years and there had never been anything done about it by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). How come that EFCC has spent 10 years of its existence without any attention being paid to this sector and to these horrendous levels of graft in the fuel subsidy regime? This would pose a puzzle to you if you did not know EFCC well enough. But some of us do. In March and April of last year, I informed the world that EFCC was not fighting corruption and was incapable of fighting corruption because the officials of EFCC were just as corrupt as those they accuse of corruption. The events at hand are revealing all that beyond any lingering doubts.



I have spoken and written volumes about the incompetency of the EFCC. I said that this agency could not tell between a crook and a bishop. Any person of average skill would have known that 80% of Nigerian foreign exchange comes from the oil sector. And if Nigeria is reputed to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, the searchlight of any anti-graft agency should be focused on the oil sector. Instead, EFCC spends all its resources arresting and detaining ordinary citizens for offenses such as issuing dud checks in the amounts as little as fifty thousand naira. In all the EFCC cells over the country today, there are hundreds of poor Nigerians being detained for many months on end for such offenses. (I have compiled the names of these unfortunate victims). Worse, most of the offenses are trumped charges seen by EFCC officials as sources for bribes and quick enrichment opportunities. The EFCC would rather spend time and resources interfering in attorney-client relationships that were established in America under American laws than deal with the real big time criminals who not only rob the country blind, but are walking free and daring Nigerians in such a blatant manner as we have just seen.



This take us back to the question of the kind of qualifications we should expect the leaders of EFCC to possess. Emphasis had been unduly placed on police work, which is why we had the kind of people that led EFCC in the past. If we see the fight against corruption from the parochial view of crimes and punishment or police work, we would end up continuing with the kind of people we have had in the leadership of that agency. But the truth is that fighting corruption involves more than batons and guns. It involves serious policy and economic analysis and jurisprudence. The police aspect of the fight against corruption ought to be at a lower level in the chain of operational priorities. We need people who can understand the interface between politics and corruption, culture and political history and social dynamics. We need people, who could understand how President Jonathan, as well as President Obasanjo before him, would see the oil industry as a fertile ground for unaccountable slush funds. We need a crime agency capable of understanding how the leaders of Nigeria could exploit the social disunity among the people to entrench themselves in corruption. We need an agency capable of analyzing and dealing with the effects of mass ignorance and disempowerment on the ability of a corrupt elites to squander and plunder the resources of their people. Instead, what we have in EFCC is a bunch of corrupt policemen who only know how to intimidate the poor and extort bribe money from them, and call that war against corruption.



We must congratulate the Nigerian common people, who finally found the guts to demand change. What has started in the past 4 days may hopefully get to a stage where it would be irreversible - from a simple demand for affordable fuel to a justifiable quest for good governance and accountable democracy. The world is watching and I hope Nigerians would be able to show that they were misunderstood all along. They cannot take it anymore. Mr. President and his men and women should pay close attention to what is going on. I also hope they realize that they are in the same position as Mubarak or Gaddafi was in the first weeks of the revolutions that swept them out of office. Also, before I forget, every Nigerian official should remember the ICC. Each innocent person that gets killed by the police opens up a real possibility of an investigation and international criminal indictment of the officials involved even in giving the general instructions for the police action. Nigerians must ask the Kenyans, the Ivoirians, the Libyans, etc how they are coping under ICC investigations.





Ephraim Emeka Ugwuonye, Esquire

President

ECULAW GROUP

NIGERIA'S MOMENT OF HALF-TRUTH - OccupyNigeria MUST BE MORE THAN FUEL SUBSIDY REMOVAL!
by Enuff Said on Monday, January 16, 2012 at 3:22am

SUMMARY: The representatives of the Government have been forced to admit that there has been rampant corruption in the management and exploitation of the fuel subsidy regime. They even went as far as naming fellow members of the Economic Management Team as culprits. Yet, with such obvious corruption, one wonders where the EFCC has been all this while. How come that EFCC never even adverted its attention to this industry? Is EFCC ever capable of fighting corruption if it could avoid the oil sector throughout the 10 years of its existence? Or is it correct that EFCC is actually irrelevant as far as fighting corruption is concerned? What lessons are the Government, the people and the world to learn from the uprising in Nigeria? They were supposed never to be united on anything. Yet, they have occupied the streets and cities of Nigeria for 4 days without any sign of getting tired soon.



MAIN: If the Occupy-Nigeria uprising achieves nothing else, it would reveal to the average Nigerian the fact that the leaders of Nigeria are mostly corrupt. For me, it confirms what I told the world in March of 2011 right from underground cell where the same people had locked me up for 150 days in violation of their own constitution.



In case you forgot, on March 21, 2011, I managed, with the help of people I cannot disclose their identity, to smuggle out a statement to the world. In that statement, I warned all Nigerians and the world at large that most of those who held public offices in Nigeria are “the real criminals, rubbing the country blind”. I spoke on strong authority as the lawyer for Nigeria in the United States for nearly 10 years. I saw many strange things in the normal course of business. I was severally pressured to join the club in the looting frenzy. But I never agreed to participate because even a blind person could tell that a time would come soon when these looters would be called upon to account for their activities and they would not be able to do so.



What astonishes me the most as I have watched events unfold in the streets of Nigeria in the past 4 days is realizing that many Nigerian leaders were not only criminals and corrupt, but also daft. How could President Jonathan allow the shenanigans around him to land him into such a complicated spot as what is on the ground today? How far did they expect the lies to carry them? The problem was never the subsidy regime. There is always one in every country. US and European Union subsidize some commodities or services for their citizens. Indeed, even the Nigerian officials are not saying no to subsidy. They just wanted to place it somewhere else, thereby undermining the sense of urgency they preached. The single most serious problem with Nigeria’s fuel subsidy regime is the criminality and corruption carried out by the officials of the Nigerian Government all the way to the presidency. Note that we are not talking of ordinary corruption. Rather, it had gotten to levels where we could call it major economic sabotage or treasonable corruption.



As a mark of dramatic irony, those officials who had set out in the last days to justify the withdrawal of subsidies on fuel had blamed it on the high level of corruption. Yet, they could not, even at the moment of half-truth, be candid with the Nigerian people. In a desperate moment of his life, the Central Bank Governor wrote a long article and blamed Otedela for corruption in the fuel business and tried to use such charge to overcome his credibility deficit with the people. But what a shame! We all know that the Central Bank Governor never took any meaningful step to investigate Otedola for corruption. We also now know the position of Otedola on the matter, as revealed in the Wikileaks. Also, we know that Otedola, the Central Bank Governor, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Petroleum are all members of the much touted, but incompetent, Economic Management Team. And do not forget that the President is the Chairman of that team, with the Vice President as the Vice Chairman. So, why are they fooling around?



Nigerians also now know that the subsidy regime, as problematic as it had always been, remained relatively manageable until the moment that Jonathan became the President. The big question should have been for an explanation of how the cost of subsidy jumped from about 250 Billion Naira to over one Trillion Naira in one year. I recall that morning when Senator Bukola Saraki of Kwara State drew the attention of the nation to this extraordinary jump. One realized immediately that the Pandora box was about to be opened. If the question had pressed further, the truth would have emerged sooner. But this Government, not wanting the question to go further, quickly moved to implement the fuel subsidy withdrawal. The reason the subsidy regime failed is that this administration abused it and used it as source of slush funds for all manner of things and personal enrichment.



If Nigerians were to learn the truth about the behavior of those in Government, the country would burn. And back to the lessons of the Occupy-Nigeria uprising: It is no longer about subsidy removal. It is about accountability and transparency in governance. Nigerians must now use the opportunity of this movement, which President Jonathan unwittingly delivered to them, to demand to hold public office-holders accountable. They should ask each Minister in the Government to declare his or her interest in local or foreign businesses with interest in the oil industry. He or she will be deemed to have interest if any family member or close associate of his or hers has such interest. Such basic test will reveal that most of the top Government officials seeking to withdraw fuel subsidy actually stand to receive tens of millions of dollars from such subsidy withdrawal within the first year.



What Nigerians must understand is that Nigerian Government officials would not undertake to perform any task unless they stand to benefit personally from such task. If you want to know where the Minister is getting millions of money from, just look at what government projects his ministry is pursuing. So it is with the fuel subsidy withdrawal business. It is a common knowledge to those of us who have worked closely with them that Nigerian Government officials never, never act in the interest or for the benefit of the country. They act only for their own personal benefit. I make no exception here. And if any Minister or Governor or Director in the Government disagrees with me, I only need one week to show the world how he steals or plans to steal millions of dollars of public funds.



A second important lesson from the Occupy-Nigeria uprising is that the Arab Spring has the potential of turning into a Nigerian Spring. Everybody recalls how President Jonathan had said last year that there could not be Arab Spring in Nigeria. What a naïve and uninsightful mindset! If he had been a better student of history, he would have known that none of the Arab leaders expected the sort of revolutionary developments that exploded upon them last year. Even a fortune teller could never have guessed that Hosni Mubarak would be standing trial today in his country or that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would be dead in the hands of rebels few weeks after declining the offer for him to leave Libya alive. Nigerian leadership did not realize that the most common characteristic of a revolution is that it is never planned and hardly ever predictable. Considering the benign ways in which game-changing uprisings started in other places, this sudden withdrawal of fuel subsidy is actually a big slam akin to throwing a fireball into a pool of gasoline. There is a distinct possibility that reversal of the subsidy decision tomorrow morning would not be able to get Nigerians quiet again. They now need to know more about the dirty ways of their leaders.



WHERE WAS THE EFCC?

It is remarkable that Nigerians would be learning about the massive corruption in the oil industry over these years and there had never been anything done about it by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). How come that EFCC has spent 10 years of its existence without any attention being paid to this sector and to these horrendous levels of graft in the fuel subsidy regime? This would pose a puzzle to you if you did not know EFCC well enough. But some of us do. In March and April of last year, I informed the world that EFCC was not fighting corruption and was incapable of fighting corruption because the officials of EFCC were just as corrupt as those they accuse of corruption. The events at hand are revealing all that beyond any lingering doubts.



I have spoken and written volumes about the incompetency of the EFCC. I said that this agency could not tell between a crook and a bishop. Any person of average skill would have known that 80% of Nigerian foreign exchange comes from the oil sector. And if Nigeria is reputed to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, the searchlight of any anti-graft agency should be focused on the oil sector. Instead, EFCC spends all its resources arresting and detaining ordinary citizens for offenses such as issuing dud checks in the amounts as little as fifty thousand naira. In all the EFCC cells over the country today, there are hundreds of poor Nigerians being detained for many months on end for such offenses. (I have compiled the names of these unfortunate victims). Worse, most of the offenses are trumped charges seen by EFCC officials as sources for bribes and quick enrichment opportunities. The EFCC would rather spend time and resources interfering in attorney-client relationships that were established in America under American laws than deal with the real big time criminals who not only rob the country blind, but are walking free and daring Nigerians in such a blatant manner as we have just seen.



This take us back to the question of the kind of qualifications we should expect the leaders of EFCC to possess. Emphasis had been unduly placed on police work, which is why we had the kind of people that led EFCC in the past. If we see the fight against corruption from the parochial view of crimes and punishment or police work, we would end up continuing with the kind of people we have had in the leadership of that agency. But the truth is that fighting corruption involves more than batons and guns. It involves serious policy and economic analysis and jurisprudence. The police aspect of the fight against corruption ought to be at a lower level in the chain of operational priorities. We need people who can understand the interface between politics and corruption, culture and political history and social dynamics. We need people, who could understand how President Jonathan, as well as President Obasanjo before him, would see the oil industry as a fertile ground for unaccountable slush funds. We need a crime agency capable of understanding how the leaders of Nigeria could exploit the social disunity among the people to entrench themselves in corruption. We need an agency capable of analyzing and dealing with the effects of mass ignorance and disempowerment on the ability of a corrupt elites to squander and plunder the resources of their people. Instead, what we have in EFCC is a bunch of corrupt policemen who only know how to intimidate the poor and extort bribe money from them, and call that war against corruption.



We must congratulate the Nigerian common people, who finally found the guts to demand change. What has started in the past 4 days may hopefully get to a stage where it would be irreversible - from a simple demand for affordable fuel to a justifiable quest for good governance and accountable democracy. The world is watching and I hope Nigerians would be able to show that they were misunderstood all along. They cannot take it anymore. Mr. President and his men and women should pay close attention to what is going on. I also hope they realize that they are in the same position as Mubarak or Gaddafi was in the first weeks of the revolutions that swept them out of office. Also, before I forget, every Nigerian official should remember the ICC. Each innocent person that gets killed by the police opens up a real possibility of an investigation and international criminal indictment of the officials involved even in giving the general instructions for the police action. Nigerians must ask the Kenyans, the Ivoirians, the Libyans, etc how they are coping under ICC investigations.





Ephraim Emeka Ugwuonye, Esquire

President

ECULAW GROUP

NIGERIA'S MOMENT OF HALF-TRUTH - OccupyNigeria MUST BE MORE THAN FUEL SUBSIDY REMOVAL!
by Enuff Said on Monday, January 16, 2012 at 3:22am

SUMMARY: The representatives of the Government have been forced to admit that there has been rampant corruption in the management and exploitation of the fuel subsidy regime. They even went as far as naming fellow members of the Economic Management Team as culprits. Yet, with such obvious corruption, one wonders where the EFCC has been all this while. How come that EFCC never even adverted its attention to this industry? Is EFCC ever capable of fighting corruption if it could avoid the oil sector throughout the 10 years of its existence? Or is it correct that EFCC is actually irrelevant as far as fighting corruption is concerned? What lessons are the Government, the people and the world to learn from the uprising in Nigeria? They were supposed never to be united on anything. Yet, they have occupied the streets and cities of Nigeria for 4 days without any sign of getting tired soon.



MAIN: If the Occupy-Nigeria uprising achieves nothing else, it would reveal to the average Nigerian the fact that the leaders of Nigeria are mostly corrupt. For me, it confirms what I told the world in March of 2011 right from underground cell where the same people had locked me up for 150 days in violation of their own constitution.



In case you forgot, on March 21, 2011, I managed, with the help of people I cannot disclose their identity, to smuggle out a statement to the world. In that statement, I warned all Nigerians and the world at large that most of those who held public offices in Nigeria are “the real criminals, rubbing the country blind”. I spoke on strong authority as the lawyer for Nigeria in the United States for nearly 10 years. I saw many strange things in the normal course of business. I was severally pressured to join the club in the looting frenzy. But I never agreed to participate because even a blind person could tell that a time would come soon when these looters would be called upon to account for their activities and they would not be able to do so.



What astonishes me the most as I have watched events unfold in the streets of Nigeria in the past 4 days is realizing that many Nigerian leaders were not only criminals and corrupt, but also daft. How could President Jonathan allow the shenanigans around him to land him into such a complicated spot as what is on the ground today? How far did they expect the lies to carry them? The problem was never the subsidy regime. There is always one in every country. US and European Union subsidize some commodities or services for their citizens. Indeed, even the Nigerian officials are not saying no to subsidy. They just wanted to place it somewhere else, thereby undermining the sense of urgency they preached. The single most serious problem with Nigeria’s fuel subsidy regime is the criminality and corruption carried out by the officials of the Nigerian Government all the way to the presidency. Note that we are not talking of ordinary corruption. Rather, it had gotten to levels where we could call it major economic sabotage or treasonable corruption.



As a mark of dramatic irony, those officials who had set out in the last days to justify the withdrawal of subsidies on fuel had blamed it on the high level of corruption. Yet, they could not, even at the moment of half-truth, be candid with the Nigerian people. In a desperate moment of his life, the Central Bank Governor wrote a long article and blamed Otedela for corruption in the fuel business and tried to use such charge to overcome his credibility deficit with the people. But what a shame! We all know that the Central Bank Governor never took any meaningful step to investigate Otedola for corruption. We also now know the position of Otedola on the matter, as revealed in the Wikileaks. Also, we know that Otedola, the Central Bank Governor, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Petroleum are all members of the much touted, but incompetent, Economic Management Team. And do not forget that the President is the Chairman of that team, with the Vice President as the Vice Chairman. So, why are they fooling around?



Nigerians also now know that the subsidy regime, as problematic as it had always been, remained relatively manageable until the moment that Jonathan became the President. The big question should have been for an explanation of how the cost of subsidy jumped from about 250 Billion Naira to over one Trillion Naira in one year. I recall that morning when Senator Bukola Saraki of Kwara State drew the attention of the nation to this extraordinary jump. One realized immediately that the Pandora box was about to be opened. If the question had pressed further, the truth would have emerged sooner. But this Government, not wanting the question to go further, quickly moved to implement the fuel subsidy withdrawal. The reason the subsidy regime failed is that this administration abused it and used it as source of slush funds for all manner of things and personal enrichment.



If Nigerians were to learn the truth about the behavior of those in Government, the country would burn. And back to the lessons of the Occupy-Nigeria uprising: It is no longer about subsidy removal. It is about accountability and transparency in governance. Nigerians must now use the opportunity of this movement, which President Jonathan unwittingly delivered to them, to demand to hold public office-holders accountable. They should ask each Minister in the Government to declare his or her interest in local or foreign businesses with interest in the oil industry. He or she will be deemed to have interest if any family member or close associate of his or hers has such interest. Such basic test will reveal that most of the top Government officials seeking to withdraw fuel subsidy actually stand to receive tens of millions of dollars from such subsidy withdrawal within the first year.



What Nigerians must understand is that Nigerian Government officials would not undertake to perform any task unless they stand to benefit personally from such task. If you want to know where the Minister is getting millions of money from, just look at what government projects his ministry is pursuing. So it is with the fuel subsidy withdrawal business. It is a common knowledge to those of us who have worked closely with them that Nigerian Government officials never, never act in the interest or for the benefit of the country. They act only for their own personal benefit. I make no exception here. And if any Minister or Governor or Director in the Government disagrees with me, I only need one week to show the world how he steals or plans to steal millions of dollars of public funds.



A second important lesson from the Occupy-Nigeria uprising is that the Arab Spring has the potential of turning into a Nigerian Spring. Everybody recalls how President Jonathan had said last year that there could not be Arab Spring in Nigeria. What a naïve and uninsightful mindset! If he had been a better student of history, he would have known that none of the Arab leaders expected the sort of revolutionary developments that exploded upon them last year. Even a fortune teller could never have guessed that Hosni Mubarak would be standing trial today in his country or that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would be dead in the hands of rebels few weeks after declining the offer for him to leave Libya alive. Nigerian leadership did not realize that the most common characteristic of a revolution is that it is never planned and hardly ever predictable. Considering the benign ways in which game-changing uprisings started in other places, this sudden withdrawal of fuel subsidy is actually a big slam akin to throwing a fireball into a pool of gasoline. There is a distinct possibility that reversal of the subsidy decision tomorrow morning would not be able to get Nigerians quiet again. They now need to know more about the dirty ways of their leaders.



WHERE WAS THE EFCC?

It is remarkable that Nigerians would be learning about the massive corruption in the oil industry over these years and there had never been anything done about it by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). How come that EFCC has spent 10 years of its existence without any attention being paid to this sector and to these horrendous levels of graft in the fuel subsidy regime? This would pose a puzzle to you if you did not know EFCC well enough. But some of us do. In March and April of last year, I informed the world that EFCC was not fighting corruption and was incapable of fighting corruption because the officials of EFCC were just as corrupt as those they accuse of corruption. The events at hand are revealing all that beyond any lingering doubts.



I have spoken and written volumes about the incompetency of the EFCC. I said that this agency could not tell between a crook and a bishop. Any person of average skill would have known that 80% of Nigerian foreign exchange comes from the oil sector. And if Nigeria is reputed to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, the searchlight of any anti-graft agency should be focused on the oil sector. Instead, EFCC spends all its resources arresting and detaining ordinary citizens for offenses such as issuing dud checks in the amounts as little as fifty thousand naira. In all the EFCC cells over the country today, there are hundreds of poor Nigerians being detained for many months on end for such offenses. (I have compiled the names of these unfortunate victims). Worse, most of the offenses are trumped charges seen by EFCC officials as sources for bribes and quick enrichment opportunities. The EFCC would rather spend time and resources interfering in attorney-client relationships that were established in America under American laws than deal with the real big time criminals who not only rob the country blind, but are walking free and daring Nigerians in such a blatant manner as we have just seen.



This take us back to the question of the kind of qualifications we should expect the leaders of EFCC to possess. Emphasis had been unduly placed on police work, which is why we had the kind of people that led EFCC in the past. If we see the fight against corruption from the parochial view of crimes and punishment or police work, we would end up continuing with the kind of people we have had in the leadership of that agency. But the truth is that fighting corruption involves more than batons and guns. It involves serious policy and economic analysis and jurisprudence. The police aspect of the fight against corruption ought to be at a lower level in the chain of operational priorities. We need people who can understand the interface between politics and corruption, culture and political history and social dynamics. We need people, who could understand how President Jonathan, as well as President Obasanjo before him, would see the oil industry as a fertile ground for unaccountable slush funds. We need a crime agency capable of understanding how the leaders of Nigeria could exploit the social disunity among the people to entrench themselves in corruption. We need an agency capable of analyzing and dealing with the effects of mass ignorance and disempowerment on the ability of a corrupt elites to squander and plunder the resources of their people. Instead, what we have in EFCC is a bunch of corrupt policemen who only know how to intimidate the poor and extort bribe money from them, and call that war against corruption.



We must congratulate the Nigerian common people, who finally found the guts to demand change. What has started in the past 4 days may hopefully get to a stage where it would be irreversible - from a simple demand for affordable fuel to a justifiable quest for good governance and accountable democracy. The world is watching and I hope Nigerians would be able to show that they were misunderstood all along. They cannot take it anymore. Mr. President and his men and women should pay close attention to what is going on. I also hope they realize that they are in the same position as Mubarak or Gaddafi was in the first weeks of the revolutions that swept them out of office. Also, before I forget, every Nigerian official should remember the ICC. Each innocent person that gets killed by the police opens up a real possibility of an investigation and international criminal indictment of the officials involved even in giving the general instructions for the police action. Nigerians must ask the Kenyans, the Ivoirians, the Libyans, etc how they are coping under ICC investigations.





Ephraim Emeka Ugwuonye, Esquire

President

ECULAW GROUP

NIGERIA'S MOMENT OF HALF-TRUTH - OccupyNigeria MUST BE MORE THAN FUEL SUBSIDY REMOVAL!
by Enuff Said on Monday, January 16, 2012 at 3:22am

SUMMARY: The representatives of the Government have been forced to admit that there has been rampant corruption in the management and exploitation of the fuel subsidy regime. They even went as far as naming fellow members of the Economic Management Team as culprits. Yet, with such obvious corruption, one wonders where the EFCC has been all this while. How come that EFCC never even adverted its attention to this industry? Is EFCC ever capable of fighting corruption if it could avoid the oil sector throughout the 10 years of its existence? Or is it correct that EFCC is actually irrelevant as far as fighting corruption is concerned? What lessons are the Government, the people and the world to learn from the uprising in Nigeria? They were supposed never to be united on anything. Yet, they have occupied the streets and cities of Nigeria for 4 days without any sign of getting tired soon.



MAIN: If the Occupy-Nigeria uprising achieves nothing else, it would reveal to the average Nigerian the fact that the leaders of Nigeria are mostly corrupt. For me, it confirms what I told the world in March of 2011 right from underground cell where the same people had locked me up for 150 days in violation of their own constitution.



In case you forgot, on March 21, 2011, I managed, with the help of people I cannot disclose their identity, to smuggle out a statement to the world. In that statement, I warned all Nigerians and the world at large that most of those who held public offices in Nigeria are “the real criminals, rubbing the country blind”. I spoke on strong authority as the lawyer for Nigeria in the United States for nearly 10 years. I saw many strange things in the normal course of business. I was severally pressured to join the club in the looting frenzy. But I never agreed to participate because even a blind person could tell that a time would come soon when these looters would be called upon to account for their activities and they would not be able to do so.



What astonishes me the most as I have watched events unfold in the streets of Nigeria in the past 4 days is realizing that many Nigerian leaders were not only criminals and corrupt, but also daft. How could President Jonathan allow the shenanigans around him to land him into such a complicated spot as what is on the ground today? How far did they expect the lies to carry them? The problem was never the subsidy regime. There is always one in every country. US and European Union subsidize some commodities or services for their citizens. Indeed, even the Nigerian officials are not saying no to subsidy. They just wanted to place it somewhere else, thereby undermining the sense of urgency they preached. The single most serious problem with Nigeria’s fuel subsidy regime is the criminality and corruption carried out by the officials of the Nigerian Government all the way to the presidency. Note that we are not talking of ordinary corruption. Rather, it had gotten to levels where we could call it major economic sabotage or treasonable corruption.



As a mark of dramatic irony, those officials who had set out in the last days to justify the withdrawal of subsidies on fuel had blamed it on the high level of corruption. Yet, they could not, even at the moment of half-truth, be candid with the Nigerian people. In a desperate moment of his life, the Central Bank Governor wrote a long article and blamed Otedela for corruption in the fuel business and tried to use such charge to overcome his credibility deficit with the people. But what a shame! We all know that the Central Bank Governor never took any meaningful step to investigate Otedola for corruption. We also now know the position of Otedola on the matter, as revealed in the Wikileaks. Also, we know that Otedola, the Central Bank Governor, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Petroleum are all members of the much touted, but incompetent, Economic Management Team. And do not forget that the President is the Chairman of that team, with the Vice President as the Vice Chairman. So, why are they fooling around?



Nigerians also now know that the subsidy regime, as problematic as it had always been, remained relatively manageable until the moment that Jonathan became the President. The big question should have been for an explanation of how the cost of subsidy jumped from about 250 Billion Naira to over one Trillion Naira in one year. I recall that morning when Senator Bukola Saraki of Kwara State drew the attention of the nation to this extraordinary jump. One realized immediately that the Pandora box was about to be opened. If the question had pressed further, the truth would have emerged sooner. But this Government, not wanting the question to go further, quickly moved to implement the fuel subsidy withdrawal. The reason the subsidy regime failed is that this administration abused it and used it as source of slush funds for all manner of things and personal enrichment.



If Nigerians were to learn the truth about the behavior of those in Government, the country would burn. And back to the lessons of the Occupy-Nigeria uprising: It is no longer about subsidy removal. It is about accountability and transparency in governance. Nigerians must now use the opportunity of this movement, which President Jonathan unwittingly delivered to them, to demand to hold public office-holders accountable. They should ask each Minister in the Government to declare his or her interest in local or foreign businesses with interest in the oil industry. He or she will be deemed to have interest if any family member or close associate of his or hers has such interest. Such basic test will reveal that most of the top Government officials seeking to withdraw fuel subsidy actually stand to receive tens of millions of dollars from such subsidy withdrawal within the first year.



What Nigerians must understand is that Nigerian Government officials would not undertake to perform any task unless they stand to benefit personally from such task. If you want to know where the Minister is getting millions of money from, just look at what government projects his ministry is pursuing. So it is with the fuel subsidy withdrawal business. It is a common knowledge to those of us who have worked closely with them that Nigerian Government officials never, never act in the interest or for the benefit of the country. They act only for their own personal benefit. I make no exception here. And if any Minister or Governor or Director in the Government disagrees with me, I only need one week to show the world how he steals or plans to steal millions of dollars of public funds.



A second important lesson from the Occupy-Nigeria uprising is that the Arab Spring has the potential of turning into a Nigerian Spring. Everybody recalls how President Jonathan had said last year that there could not be Arab Spring in Nigeria. What a naïve and uninsightful mindset! If he had been a better student of history, he would have known that none of the Arab leaders expected the sort of revolutionary developments that exploded upon them last year. Even a fortune teller could never have guessed that Hosni Mubarak would be standing trial today in his country or that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would be dead in the hands of rebels few weeks after declining the offer for him to leave Libya alive. Nigerian leadership did not realize that the most common characteristic of a revolution is that it is never planned and hardly ever predictable. Considering the benign ways in which game-changing uprisings started in other places, this sudden withdrawal of fuel subsidy is actually a big bang akin to throwing a fireball into a pool of gasoline. There is a distinct possibility that reversal of the subsidy decision tomorrow morning would not be able to get Nigerians quiet again. They now need to know more about the dirty ways of their leaders.



WHERE WAS THE EFCC?

It is remarkable that Nigerians would be learning about the massive corruption in the oil industry over these years and there had never been anything done about it by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). How come that EFCC has spent 10 years of its existence without any attention being paid to this sector and to these horrendous levels of graft in the fuel subsidy regime? This would pose a puzzle to you if you did not know EFCC well enough. But some of us do. In March and April of last year, I informed the world that EFCC was not fighting corruption and was incapable of fighting corruption because the officials of EFCC were just as corrupt as those they accuse of corruption. The events at hand are revealing all that beyond any lingering doubts.



I have spoken and written volumes about the incompetency of the EFCC. I said that this agency could not tell between a crook and a bishop. Any person of average skill would have known that 80% of Nigerian foreign exchange comes from the oil sector. And if Nigeria is reputed to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, the searchlight of any anti-graft agency should be focused on the oil sector. Instead, EFCC spends all its resources arresting and detaining ordinary citizens for offenses such as issuing dud checks in the amounts as little as fifty thousand naira. In all the EFCC cells over the country today, there are hundreds of poor Nigerians being detained for many months on end for such offenses. (I have compiled the names of these unfortunate victims). Worse, most of the offenses are trumped charges seen by EFCC officials as sources for bribes and quick enrichment opportunities. The EFCC would rather spend time and resources interfering in attorney-client relationships that were established in America under American laws than deal with the real big time criminals who not only rob the country blind, but are walking free and daring Nigerians in such a blatant manner as we have just seen.



This take us back to the question of the kind of qualifications we should expect the leaders of EFCC to possess. Emphasis had been unduly placed on police work, which is why we had the kind of people that led EFCC in the past. If we see the fight against corruption from the parochial view of crimes and punishment or police work, we would end up continuing with the kind of people we have had in the leadership of that agency. But the truth is that fighting corruption involves more than batons and guns. It involves serious policy and economic analysis and jurisprudence. The police aspect of the fight against corruption ought to be at a lower level in the chain of operational priorities. We need people who can understand the interface between politics and corruption, culture and political history and social dynamics. We need people, who could understand how President Jonathan, as well as President Obasanjo before him, would see the oil industry as a fertile ground for unaccountable slush funds. We need a crime agency capable of understanding how the leaders of Nigeria could exploit the social disunity among the people to entrench themselves in corruption. We need an agency capable of analyzing and dealing with the effects of mass ignorance and disempowerment on the ability of a corrupt elites to squander and plunder the resources of their people. Instead, what we have in EFCC is a bunch of corrupt policemen who only know how to intimidate the poor and extort bribe money from them, and call that war against corruption.



We must congratulate the Nigerian common people, who finally found the guts to demand change. What has started in the past 4 days may hopefully get to a stage where it would be irreversible - from a simple demand for affordable fuel to a justifiable quest for good governance and accountable democracy. The world is watching and I hope Nigerians would be able to show that they were misunderstood all along. They cannot take it anymore. Mr. President and his men and women should pay close attention to what is going on. I also hope they realize that they are in the same position as Mubarak or Gaddafi was in the first weeks of the revolutions that swept them out of office. Also, before I forget, every Nigerian official should remember the ICC. Each innocent person that gets killed by the police opens up a real possibility of an investigation and international criminal indictment of the officials involved even in giving the general instructions for the police action. Nigerians must ask the Kenyans, the Ivoirians, the Libyans, etc how they are coping under ICC investigations.





Ephraim Emeka Ugwuonye, Esquire

President

ECULAW GROUP

This is cool oga Spyder. Thumbs up

I nominate Fhemmy

I don't know why Lafarge's cement is not as popular in use and demand as Burham and Dangote. Pls can you shed more light on this being their rep?

Richard, pls can you send details of cost and workability of this devise on any type of gate, whether sliding or swinging gate. Please send a reply to suan2@yahoo.com

Fhemmmy hi? Will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks for the mails. Will definitely let you know the choice made and then we start from there.

You're doing a great job in the Auto section too. God increase and multiply you. I appreciate.

Thanks Spyder for demystifying the myth that surrounds building in its entirety. Do you blame a novice like me. I have heard it said that it's unthinkable for you to
deck a house beyond one day. It's either it cracks or presents an uneven surface. But with what I've seen done through you and your team yesterday, the belief as far as I'm concerned is in the trash can.

Thanks for your simplicity. Thanks for this "BUILDING MADE SIMPLE" and not only "REAL COST OF, ".

Thanks for all the contributors in the house. I truly appreciate your efforts. I can't quantify the depth of knowledge passed down to us novices.

Still waiting to get the details of the real quantity of rods, woods, gravels and sand used.

Congratulations SPYDER.

Can't wait to see the pics from the just concluded decking by Spyder and his team. Thought doing decking for 2days is a tabboo. Hope the decking won't be adversely affected in any way.