₦airaland Forum

LeOstrich:
4 th mainland bridge?

Lekki port?

Lekki airport?

Lagos Cable car?

Lagos light rail?

The Houdini disapering Lagos Yatch hotel?

Please give me an up to date summary of the aforementioned projects work progress.

Kingspin:
Hey! Dont be too emotionally blind.. That man is having and living large. He is super rich.

obayaya:
To judge performance effectively, you'll have to compare resources at the governors' disposal to what they've been able to achieve. Do this and see Fashola fall behind the likes of Sule lamido of Jigawa and Ibrahim Shema of Kastina.

Well, if only Fashola agreed to pass the FOI bill in Lagos state, we won't be faced with this scarcity of evidence. I think you should ask mr Fashola what he's hiding. And moreover my argument was based on the premises in your post I quoted.

The argument isn't if he's best for me or not.

Are you willing to ignore the "corruption" you always accuse him of encouraging because he's doing better than our past presidents the way you were willing to ignore the allegations that Tinubu is looting Lagos state just because Fashola according to you is performing better than other governors?

When the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 250 Nigerian schoolgirls last spring, many news reports noted that Nigeria had long been one of the biggest suppliers of oil to the United States, suggesting that economic relationship gave Washington a strong incentive to help track down the kidnappers.

That was wrong.

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In April, the same month the girls were snatched from an elementary school in Chibok, only 4.5 million barrels of Nigerian oil arrived at U.S. ports, down from a record high of 40 million barrels seven years earlier.

And by July, the spigot was shut off completely. Over the next six weeks, not a single drop of Nigerian light, sweet crude arrived in the U.S. - all of it replaced at Gulf Coast refineries by fracked oil from fields like the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Eagle Ford in Texas.


The American Energy BoomMEET THE PRESS



The big fat zero was a milestone not only on the United States' journey toward energy independence, but a signpost pointing to a new world. With it, Nigeria became the first formerly flush oil producer to essentially lose its entire share of the U.S. market, leaving it scrambling for new customers, less able to fund its internal war on terror and less important to the U.S.

"Nigeria is facing a sea change in relations with the United States, a sea change in its geopolitical position in the world," says Peter Pham, director of the Africa Program at the Atlantic Council, searching for words to capture the magnitude of the moment.

"This energy shift is akin to the collapse of the Soviet Union in its foreign policy implications."

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Experts are just beginning to sort through the implications of the U.S. switching from being the biggest single consumer of petroleum to a producer and - eventually perhaps - a competitor. They see Nigeria, which generates 70 percent of its budget from oil sales, as a test case that may hold important clues about how other oil-rich nations like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Russia will react as their oil-driven economies come under additional pressure.

"The collapse of the price of oil brought on by the rise in American production is fundamentally changing the world," said John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and now director of the Ralph Bunche Center at the Council on Foreign Relations. "This energy shift is akin to the collapse of the Soviet Union in its foreign policy implications."

Daniel Yergin, an energy researcher with IHS Cera and author of "The Quest," a history of oil and geopolitics, said that, in the near term at least, the road will remain rocky for the government of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

"Nigeria as a country has three big issues: The loss of its biggest market in the U.S.; secondly, the price decline has really hit them; and the third thing is, of course, they're suffering this insurgency in the north," he said.


World Looking to U.S. for EnergyMEET THE PRESS



John Kilduff, a veteran oil trader with Again Capital, agrees that Africa's most populous nation faces "a rough decade" as it struggles to find new customers for the oil formerly exported to the U.S. In the interim, he said, he expects "economic upheavals and social unrest."

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The financial impact already is getting serious.

Nigeria's Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala announced last week that a 6 percent drop in oil revenue would force the government to cut non-essential spending, raise more revenue and spend half of its $4.1 billion sovereign wealth fund - down from $11.5 billion at the start of 2013 -- to cover budgetary shortfalls. There also have been calls for the government to print more of its national currency, the naira, to cushion the impact of the recent oil price declines, though Okonjo-Iweala has so far rejected them.

The government in Abuja is simultaneously struggling to address the violent Islamic insurrection in the north, where Boko Haram continues to terrorize the citizenry with bombings, butchery and mass abductions. The government recently announced it has authorized taking out a billion dollar loan from Western banks to finance the war against Boko Haram.

Will 'bunkering' of oil cease?

Campbell, the former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, says that the country could descend into chaos if the price of oil falls beyond its current $78-a-barrel price, because its finances already have been pushed to the breaking point by oil "bunkering" - or theft by Nigerian officials - which he estimates represents around 10 percent of Nigerian production.

"That oil finances the patronage, clientage network," he said. "It is all illegal (but) it's the grease to the system, and as the value falls … the grease dries up and the system doesn't work."

And Carl Levan, a professor at American University and author of "Dictators and Democracy in African Development," says turmoil in Nigeria could quickly spread through west Africa, already beset by long-running civil wars, an Ebola epidemic and political crises.

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Many observers say the shift in oil production also will have broad ramifications outside of west Africa. It could lead the U.S. to focus on new priorities -- including Asia - and make it less likely to intervene when faraway national or regional conflicts don't threaten its economic wellbeing. That, in turn, could mean that small battles will become global ones, without a superpower willing to check them in their infancy, they say.

And the situation could get even worse for oil-reliant nations -- and regions. With U.S. production soaring at the same time its consumption is declining, the U.S. may become a competitor in the longer term, with an ability to undercut producers like Nigeria.

Oil Tanker Train ANDREW BURTON / GETTY IMAGES
Oil containers sit at a train depot on July 26, 2013 outside Williston, North Dakota. North Dakota has been experiencing an oil boom recently, bringing tens of thousands of jobs to the region, lowering state unemployment and bringing a surplus to the state budget. Train yards are one of the primary ways oil is exported from the state.
Although it isn't discussed much in political debates, U.S. officials are well aware of the possible ramifications.

"A dramatic expansion of U.S. production could … push global spare capacity to exceed 8 million barrels per day, at which point OPEC could lose price control and crude oil prices would drop, possibly sharply," the National Intelligence Council, the U.S. intelligence community's internal think tank, said in its "Global Trends 2030" report in December 2012. "Such a drop would take a heavy toll on many energy producers who are increasingly dependent on relatively high energy prices to balance their budgets."

The day of reckoning may not be as far off as 2030. As Citigroup noted in Energy 2020, its own analysis of the oil trade, issued early this month, "Eight years ago, in August 2006, the U.S. imported, net, a little over 13.4 million barrels a day of crude and products; recently the net import number has fallen to 4.7 million barrels a day."

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As a result of the shift, U.S. relations with oil exporters will grow far more complicated as the haves become economic have-nots. It's already happening with Nigeria, says Pham.

[b]Earlier this month, a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations visited the Nigerian Embassy in Washington where they were lectured by Ambassador Ade Adefuye on the lack of U.S. support for his government's operations against Boko Haram. Adefuye told the visitors that Washington at first refused to share intelligence with the Nigerian government and also withheld "lethal equipment that would have brought down the terrorists within a short time on the basis of allegations that Nigeria's defense forces have been violating human rights of Boko Haram suspects when captured or arrested."

The comments were posted on the front page of the embassy's website, which Pham said wouldn't have happened without approval from the Nigerian goverment. And the angry rejoinder itself wouldn't have happened at all in the past, when relations between the countries were considered too important to risk ruffling feathers in Washington.

Pham suggested that the lack of oil trade also could lead the U.S. to step back or even away from Nigeria.[/b]

Six years ago, he noted the U.S. played a key role in negotiations between the Nigerian government and a group of insurgents known as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), who felt they had been left out of the economic boom fueled by oil production in the delta. When they rose up, a third of the nation's oil production was cut off.

"The U.S. coaxed Nigeria into peace talks with amnesty payments, training, etc., (and) successive U.S. ambassadors were involved," noted Pham. "Would they be involved again? Although U.S. companies, like Chevron would be affected, the U.S. oil supply would not. Would it be easier for a U.S. administration to not make it a priority?"

The answer to that question may be revealed soon. The Nigerian government's agreement with MEND expires next year and must be renewed. It is not clear if the U.S. intends to get involved in those negotiations.

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"The pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are aggressive, but if piracy is not affecting our supply, there is a danger that our response won't be as robust."

Pham also recalled that several years ago the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet helped coordinate a response to pirate attacks on Nigerian oil tankers, but has not been as forceful in recent months, despite an increase in the attacks.

"The pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are aggressive, but if piracy is not affecting our supply, there is a danger that our response won't be as robust, particularly when there are so many other demands on a U.S. Navy that has fewer ships," he said.

If the U.S. adopts a lower profile in Africa as a result of its diminished hunger for the continent's oil, Nigeria and other nations will look to China and, to a lesser extent, India to take up the slack.

Some experts believe that China may fill the void to some extent, both as a customer for African oil and as an investor and influencer.

Military analyst William M. Arkin is among them, saying the U.S. Africa Command believes that China is ready to step into a leading role in Africa, targeting its vast mineral resources. "China is exceeding U.S. investments in Africa and that, too, changes the geopolitics," he said.

But Levan, the American University professor and Africa expert, says it is "questionable" whether India and China can make up for Nigeria's lost U.S. sales, in part because refineries in both countries are set up to process cheaper heavy crude oil, not light, sweet crude oil. He also notes that India is more likely to get its oil from nearby Iraq and Iran, assuming the latter is freed from international sanctions, while China is looking to fracking to become energy independent.

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Kilduff, the oil trader, agrees that China will not be the savior for Nigeria or other diminishing oil economies.

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"Every OPEC member facing this crisis has a nice PowerPoint presentation showing how Chinese exports will replace U.S. purchases," he said sarcastically.

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In reality, declining growth in China and the rest of East Asia is going to mean the market is going will shrink worldwide just as more and more oil goes on line, Kilduff said. That could result in a further drop in prices, maybe as low as $50 a barrel, at which point he says Nigeria might be forced to curtail production or store crude, he said.

Experts and oil traders say that Nigeria is the first of several smaller OPEC countries to see their connection with the U.S. change as their crude exports drop. Already, Angola has seen nearly all its U.S. market share vanish, and Venezuela is likewise looking for alternative markets for its heavy crude, Citigroup's "Energy 2020" report states.



"Smaller oil exporter countries like Iraq and Kuwait may be able to hold on to their market share, but only by accepting lower prices," it said. "… Going forward, Colombia, Brazil, Russia, Angola, Ecuador, Iraq, and Kuwait could also see their market share dwindle."

Johnpaul88:
What will this be used for??

preselect:
our debate has been polite so far. . . i was hoping i could at least have some respectable exchange of ideas for once in nairaland someday. Alas, that day is not today.

by the way, the greatest sign of lack of argumentative substance is the shameful resort to negative language and distraction from the topic at hand.

i remain positive, someday. there shall be a civilized person and even if we disagree, it shall be with full civility and polished language

obayaya:
So because Fashola is doing better than all the governors (I don't know your yardstick for that though), it doesn't matter if he allows Tinubu loots as much as he can from the state's treasury?

If the above premise is correct, then am sure you won't have a problem with GEJ who despite the huge corruption you guys always allege he encourages, has done more than all the other democratically elected presidents of Nigeria.

arresa:
A particular section of Nigeria hate America because of their silliness and ignorance, not the whole of Nigeria.

preselect:
i guess you are not nigerian since you refer to the nigerian govt as "your" and not "our"

anyways, you've already called it worthless govt, that is the #1 reason why they can't prosecute corrupt politicians---simple logic 101.
this is a govt that could not prosecute a hardened unrepentant murderer whom the security operatives went as far as sudan to capture. did you expect them to prosecute Tinubu?

this same Tinubu you are defending tenaciously, had lied about his college education even when it was absolutely unnecessary to the chagrin of the honorable Gani Fawehimi of blessed memory.

go on defending him. . keep waiting for the "worthless and incompetent government" to prosecute him. but know this, i dont care that you are sympathetic to APC, and that's okay being in APC, but until we all as a people learn how to rise up and see something unacceptable and say so, regardless of if the person involved is of our party or ethnic group or religion or whatever demographic, until we are able to speak up boldly against evil, or at least refuse to support or defend something irresponsible, we will continue to perambulate in a sea of escalating poverty and social inequality from generation to generation.

this is not a curse, and definitely not a prophesy. it is just a simple statement of fact. just like "predicting" after wednesday comes thursday

ibson99:
I wonder what the wisdom behind this moronic decision is. No matter what, the US government is a necessary evil it is better for them to be by your side than to be against you. Its almost as if this government doesn't want to end insurgency in this country.

BabaAlabi:
The same Tinubu that is crying about PDP and corruption is even more corrupt. APC should remove the log in their eye before talking about others.
NOTE-I don't support PDP and I don't support APC. Both are devlish parties filled with thieves.

BabaAlabi:
The reason is simple. There's no better alternative,no better man,no better leader than Goodluck Jonathan. APC comprises of dogs who want power by all means and that is why their presidential candidates are old impotent men with one foot in the grave.
Many Nigerians vote for the man and not the party so you cannot compare Goodluck and Buhari/Atiku/El Rufai.

preselect:
in summary, your point is. . . . "tinubu is corrupt, we don't care" . . . and you got all these "likes"? . . . . . . . and tomorrow people wonder what is wrong with nigeria.

Aiyekooto:
There are some arguments that are bereft of ideas and the "uncommon" sense. Unfortunately, some people will sit in beer parlours and churn out all kinds of vomits their mouth can spurn trying to see where to hang their woeful life achievements.

If one man can be vastly corrupt as we're made to believe, how come no government locally and internationally is yet to dock him especially a major opposition leader.

In 1990, my salary was #125 as a clerical officer in a government parastatal and I was very ok. If you get sense and you have access to such money as $2000 as at the time with the prestige of office that Tinubu had, you'll be dawned if you don't own jets now.

If banks will grant me loans for business because they know I have the capacity to pay back by virtue of my office and I buy a house in ikoyi which I let out or convert to a guest house and make money on daily basis while your lazy dumbasses cry to high heavens, should I care.

If it is that easy to steal try your luck if you will not be barbecued.

For those sorry asses, if you don't know what biz to do to make money, start with pure water on a sale or return basis, most producers welcome it and come and give testimony after a month. LEAVE TINUBU ALONE FACE YOUR OWN LIFE.

Cannonleo:
Guy we have nns centenary

leofab:
our ties with North Korea is all we need for now; soon America will steer clear for Nigeria same way they are shitting their panties because of North Korea!!!

ZUBY77:
That’s just the problem with toads... You expect me to go and Sue Tinubu for stealing?.. How many corrupt leaders have tour corrupt lawyers been able to convict in your corrupt courts?

Where us Lawan Farouk?
They already made the system a mess and goats are most likely never going to emancipate themselves from this Devils... Tinubu is a Saint...

If your court is not corrupt, your TB Joshua should be in jail by now for mass murder.

notobs:
You are now revealing your true identity of an APC spokesman! APC and the USA are rooting for Nigeria to fail, Your strategy will fail. GEJ will be returned as president 2015, and boko haram and their sponsors will be chased out of nigeria for good.

BlackTechnology:
You think you are weakening the present government.

If you care to study history, you would ask yourself these questions

1) Y did US refused to sell us offensive weapons.?

2) If they are scared that the military will lose it to BH, why not give us one to prove their point.

3) If they are scared of human right abuses, why not give us the weapons on an agreement that if we fail to courtmarshal any mad soldier that they will withdraw their help.

leofab:
war ship you say; or. Metal scrap; why was the surveillance equipment and the main gun removed? And did I hear say free of charge? You are crazy; we paid for the refurbishing!!!!

Cannonleo:
Bro quit the yapping...nothing of value was given 2 us there.a coup of trucks.hescos no heavy weaponry or offensive enabled eqip was given..simply put it was like a state govt donating hiluxs to the police.am very glad that our upgrade FTA gotten ships are servicable else were..plus our OPV are now in action.go to hell USA

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, SAN (2nd left) signing the Executive Order Establishing a Sex Offenders’ Register at the Banquet Hall, Lagos House Ikeja, on Monday, December 1, 2014

notobs:
Few hand guns and the ships are not what the Nigerian Army needs to counter the insurgency!

A nigerian Auto manufacturer INNOSON motors has the capacity to produce 500 - 1000 trucks like the ones you are posting daily, If trucks were what the army needed Nigeria would have placed an order from innoson Motors not gone to ask the US for help, What the Nigerian Army needs are military grade attack helicopters and night vision capability and thats what the US is blocking Nigeria from Accquiring, and thats what we are discussing here not you palmy illusions!

dallyemmy:
I am not saying Nigeria does not have fault. Tell me how many countries they have assisted to fight war without regret? it is all about their interes firstt. Ask the libyans, iraqis even the afghans they would all tell you the same.

notobs:
You lowlife learn to reason with your head and not your but t? What correlation has the navy in the Atlantic coast of Nigeria has with the land based insurgency in the northern part of the country?

Is Nigerian navy going to fly their warship to sambisa and kano to fight insurgency? You need to go back to school and learn comprehension and basic logic.

25 June, 2014

On Monday, June 23, 2014 in the Aguiyi Ironsi Cantonment, Brigade of Guards headquarters, Abuja, the United States Government transferred to the Nigerian Army non-lethal transportation, communication and force protection equipment in support of the Nigerian Army’s battle against terrorism.

According to a statement from the US Mission in Nigeria, Major General Ibrahim Sani, Chief of Army Transformation and Innovation, received the equipment from General Linder on behalf of the Nigerian Army. He said the equipment will enhance the operational capabilities of the Nigerian Army.

During a courtesy call on Army Headquarters, Brigadier General James B.Linder, Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, was received by Major General John A H Ewansiha, Chief of Army Training and Operations (CTOPS), Nigerian Army Headquarters.

25 June, 2014

On Monday, June 23, 2014 in the Aguiyi Ironsi Cantonment, Brigade of Guards headquarters, Abuja, the United States Government transferred to the Nigerian Army non-lethal transportation, communication and force protection equipment in support of the Nigerian Army’s battle against terrorism.

According to a statement from the US Mission in Nigeria, Major General Ibrahim Sani, Chief of Army Transformation and Innovation, received the equipment from General Linder on behalf of the Nigerian Army. He said the equipment will enhance the operational capabilities of the Nigerian Army.

During a courtesy call on Army Headquarters, Brigadier General James B.Linder, Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, was received by Major General John A H Ewansiha, Chief of Army Training and Operations (CTOPS), Nigerian Army Headquarters.

dallyemmy:
Bros because of Chevron and Mobil wey be their company na im-make den give us. Only God know whether den neva bug all the war ships sef!

kushfc:
What kind of training is dat when u ppl refused to sell weapon to us.

Firefire:
Your Masters shall face the prison when the time comes.


Fashola & Tinubu stealing in this order...

Tinubu 1999 - to Date

Fashola - 2007 - 2015