₦airaland Forum

It is beyond sad

I heard my neighbours kid. .less than six years old

say, "i hate this Nigeria, poor country with poor poor people, i dont like this country!!!"

i wondered where hope will come from

Youths: A future without hope? http://www.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4077&Itemid=13:testset
Written by Amiru Halilu, Daura Close off Daura Road, Kaduna.
Friday, 06 February 2009
Recently I was invited to a political gathering where one of the key men in Governor Namadi’s administration was the chief guest. I accepted the invitation only after I was informed that youths development would be the topic of discussion. I however had no idea the meeting was to be attended by people from different areas.

But I must say that I later regretted attending the meeting. This was because I found myself in the midst of people with no future ambition, and who, lamentably, are expected to the leaders of tomorrow as often said.

When the representatives in attendance were called upon to make their submissions, most of them ended up in sycophancy. To my greatest astonishment, no one deemed it relevant to talk about education. No wonder education forms the backbone of every developed nation.

Indeed the only achievement the third speaker thought was worth mentioning was the fact that he was the first person to record a song for Governor Namadi Sambo. What a shame! Imagine a 28 year old, who should have had his first degree if not second by now, but still unserious about life.

When I was asked to make my own contribution, I first ‘queried’ the chief guest why he was late and refuse to offer any explanation to that effect. I then followed it up with asking his views about the standard of education in the state and what the government was doing to improve it. My reason is simple; lack of education has been and will continue to be a clog on the wheel of our progress unless something positive is done about it.

I also advised my fellow youths to stop turning themselves into mere campaign accessories and start working towards planning for their future which is bright. But soon after I had finished making my submission, some unscrupulous people said I should be forced out of the gathering because it wasn’t organized for people like me.

But I thank God, the chief guest who had earlier spoken before me, saw the need to respond to my submission. I was however disturbed with his weird logic when he said if giving priority to education is what I call development, receiving Atampa, motorcycle, sewing machines etc from government is what others call development, adding that he would rather give the people what they want. We really need to reflect about life and get our priorities right.

Amiru Halilu, Daura Close off Daura Road, Kaduna. Haliluamiru@yahoo.com

Dear Finally,
czarskit was spot on. For u not to see his point u must believe in ethnic supremacy. Only the dominance of your ethnic group will do. Quality is not a monopoly of one group, it`s spread all over Nigeria.

Ijaw In The Diaspora: Their Hypocrisy Is Tiring http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/index.php/content/view/11397/55
Written by Sabella Ogbobode Abidde
Tuesday, 03 February 2009
Sabella Ogbobode Abidde


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The Ijaw Ethnic Nationality is said to be indigenous to the coastal area of modern Nigeria. For more than seven hundred years, the Ijaw traded with and conducted diplomacy with the Europeans. And for much of recorded history, the region has been in a bedlam: the people opposed to marginalization, oppression and exploitation.

In so many ways, not much has changed since the Portuguese and the British first set foot in that part of the world. It was a breadbasket. They traded in palm oil and in various other agricultural resources. The region continues to be a breadbasket with its vast reservoir of oil and gas.

In recent years, especially within the last fifty years, the Ijaw Ethnic Group -- spread over six or more states -- wanted a Mecca, a Jerusalem. They wanted a Home. And so it was that a group of men and women endured sleepless nights and uncertain daylight hours just to actualize an Ijaw Homeland. Their efforts seem wasted now as the younger generation has mostly engaged in local exploitation and marginalization of their own people.

First, a man name Alamieyeseigha came along to make a mess. He spat on his people’s face and showed them his middle finger. His calamitous rule was followed by the rudderless acts of Jonathan Goodluck. As if the people had committed cardinal sins, their gods sent a lackey name Timipre Sylva. In rapid succession, they misappropriated the people’s resources and lay waste their dreams and aspirations.

Alamieyeseigha, Jonathan Goodluck and now Timipre Sylva: three sons of the soil soiled their heritage, made fun of their ancestors, mortgaged the people’s hope, and then went on to steal from posterity.

Not only did Alamieyeseigha and Jonathan Goodluck engage in criminality (as Governors of Bayelsa State), they also asphyxiated a burgeoning democratic culture. What is democracy without a thriving and healthy opposition? What is government without a freely expressed legitimacy conferred upon it by the people?

How do you positively impact people’s lives without a responsive, responsible and transparent government? And how does a society function without a populace that holds its government responsible for its actions and inactions. No society can afford to be timid. No society can afford to be lackadaisical.

Indeed, no society can afford to be indifferent to the actions and pronouncements of its representatives. A society – any society -- that is afraid to caution, counsel and or reprimand its representatives is not only asking to be trampled upon, to be abused and to be used, it is indeed asking for disaster.

In a later date and exposition, I shall return to this theme -- a theme that demands further and careful analysis. The Ijaw, as we shall see, are in a critical stage in their history.

For now, it is the behavior and the pronouncements of the overseas-based Ijaw, the Diaspora Ijaw, which is vexing me -- specifically, those Ijaw who live in the UK, Canada, and the US. The vast majority are “God-fearing,” but there is a group (whose membership is increasing at an alarming rate) that is galling all decent Ijaw men and women.

We have Ijaw organizations that are simply useless, and in some cases, directionless. We have members and leaders within such organizations that have no clue as to their aims and objectives. We have leaders and members who steal and misappropriate public funds; yet, are very vocal when it comes to issues of crimes and corrupt practices in the Niger Delta.

There are Ijaw who, publicly, will abuse and attack and criticize government officials; yet, when government officials visit the United States, Canada or the UK, will be first in line genuflecting, running errands and getting involved in all sorts of duplicity and stupidity: they arrange prostitutes and call-girls for government officials; they help government officials hide money; and help them to export cars, furniture, electronics and other goods.

Some of these overseas-based Ijaw have no visible means of income other than the “maintenance allowance” they get from governors, ministers, commissioners and other high ranking public and private officials. They have become the gate-keepers, the treasury-keepers for thieves and rogues and political bastards.

We have gotten to the point where you cannot criticize members of the Ijaw-Diaspora who engages in criminality. We know they steal. We know they engage in shady deals; and we know they inflate contract costs. In fact, we know they get contracts that are mostly never executed. We know they are milking our people back home. Yet, we cannot criticize them.

If you are bold enough to say a word about their crimes, their surrogates and supporters will attack you. They will come after you. And so one wonders: (a) How can you criticize the state governor or commissioner if you are also involved in shady deals; (b) How can you criticize the local government chair if you are also involved in criminalities; (c) How can you call for change and progress when you are a hindrance to change and progress; and (d) How can you call yourself a change agent if you have no tolerance for criticism?

When it is all said and done, some Ijaw in the Diaspora are worse than most of the elites back home. Given the chance, we’d commit more crimes than those who occupy official positions. Given the opportunity, they’d oppress, suppress, exploit and rape the less fortunate back home.

Given the way some Ijaw behave in the Western world -- once home and once given the opportunity to govern people and be in charge of the public purse -- they’d turn into a monster: proscribing opposition and prohibiting criticisms. But more than that, they’d engage in unparallel criminality.

Yes, no one is without sins. No one is without faults. And no one is perfect. Even so, we must do better; we must do more to set good examples and be beacons on the hill. If one is entrusted with an organization’s fund or if one is entrusted with public money -- one must give accurate and timely account; and one must respond to all questions.

One cannot and must not hide or refuse to answer questions in the name of privacy. Imagine what such a person or group of people would do if entrusted with millions and millions of the state’s monthly allocation.

And so it is that today – especially within the last five years -- a sizeable number of overseas-based Ijaw have been co-opted into looting the state’ treasury. They are silent, when they should speak up. They look the other way, when they should raise alarm over indecent behaviors. They giggle when they should be condemning crimes and transgressions. Their hypocrisy and their indecent indulgence are tiring. It really is.

Sabidde@yahoo.com

Na wa 4 aba   

Nobody is talking about tribalism.After all the person that wrote the story is an igbo man

Where all the mathematicians they have, oh sorry the Hausa Fulani didn't let them lead

where all the business minded people in that area, oh they invest in Kano and Lagos

Oh sierra Leone and Gambia are actually enjoying those allocations received from the feds

In Nigeria? Only when Kobojunkie becomes president in the next 30 years. That is if BecomeRich will allow Nigeria to remain in tact by then but I doubt it because he will bomb the whole place at this rate he's fuming with satellite infra red technology.

@ honerico1
I followed your posts on this thread and man i agree with you all the way.

@ Earthma (sorry if i got that wrongly)
Its not just about tribalism but this is pure discrimination to the Edo people. not speaking from a bias view. I'm Deltan not Edo and this year would be my fourth year as a student in Uniben.
If you check through the top shots, as in lecturers and profs and people in admin(I'm speaking generally now) you'll find quite a large populace of igbo people.
, and don't tell me they got there by merit. Nwanze was very instrumental in bringing and ensuring the rise of many igbos; more above the edo indigene lecturers and staffs in the school.


and as for those people praising Nwanze so much, let them first ask why he was busy fooling outsiders with the beauty of external gates, when the uniben hostre in a mess. As i write this, my department has no class. We receive our lectures in labs, thats crap, thank God, by His grace i'm leaving there this year.

let them also ask him about the not well accounted money of over 150million naira that made staffs to go on strike for a week last year 2nd semester.

igbos are flooding a vicinity that is supposed to be dominantly Edos. Its not tribalsim, but how Nigeria is. If an okoro would become VC,, why not just let them become state governor of Lagos.


I'm sure all yourubas in the house go shout one time "NEVER", and at this stage of our democracy,,, i agree with them.

, So, an Igbo VC in the great University Of Benin:::::::::::::::::: Definately not a very bright idea, And I frown against such motion

His spokesperson, Zach Lowe, said in a statement, that the subcommittee would pay particular attention to Nigeria, Somalia, the broader Horn of Africa, the Sahel region, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Let us take a cursory look at some of the soul-destroying statistics gathered from Vanguard newspaper and AFP reports: In the first week of January alone, Central Bank sold about N1.180 billion worth of foreign currency to 15 firms for the importation of power generating sets! Last year alone, average residential expenditure on fuelling power generators was N1.56 trillion. The estimate for commercial and industrial fuelling of generating sets was over N4 trillion! More than 400 of the about 500 industries Kano, the commercial hub of the North, had in the 1990s have closed down due largely to “chronic electricity shortages”. Last month, a 75 year-old man, Pa Michael Aiweriokhoe, his wife and four members of his family were found dead on a Monday morning in their home in Benin-city, of fume inhalation from the family’s electricity generating set. Amongst the dead were two young graduates, future of Nigeria. This unfortunate family join the statistics of thousands of such calamity the country bears yearly.

If We Can’t Get Electricity Right, Forget Nigeria http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/index.php/content/view/11436/55
Written by Tunde Fagbenle
Monday, 09 February 2009
If We Can’t Get Electricity Right, Forget Nigeria

Tunde Fagbenle


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If the title of this piece sounds harsh or alarmist in anyone’s ears, then such a one is either complacently ignorant of the magnitude of the mess in which we are enmeshed as a country or is one of those complicit in the grand deceit and larceny of our collective fortune and future. Simply put, a country that has no clue on how, or lacks the collective will, to provide uninterrupted power supply to meet her domestic and industrial needs loses her locus standi as a modern nation.

When Mr Umaru Yar’Adua came to power as our president, he soberly put the issue of electric power as his highest priority. Indeed to underscore the imperative, he said a “state of emergency” would be declared in the power sector as the cornerstone of his well touted but now banal“7-point Agenda”. Almost two years on, neither the “state of emergency” nor the emergency of our state has dawned on his government.

President Yar’Adua is looking as helpless, even as hopeless, as his fire-spitting predecessor ended up after 8 years in the saddle and the exhaustion of his clustered wit. Obasanjo, a retired general, swore to deal with the power problem once and for all. His first power minister, our late Uncle Bola Ige, even naively ruled a deadline of 6 months! But six years later, and almost as many power ministers in turn, it was clear the old general had been generally overpowered by the power he sought to power.

This is not a time to play on words; we are a nation in crisis. The crisis of power is now the crisis of our nationhood. And the enormity of the challenge challenges our collective conscience. The statistics of waste – of resources and of human life – is colossal and jeer at us. Is there something in us either in Nigeria or as Nigerians that condemns us to folly in perpetuity? For I do not think there is any other country on earth, or any other peoples, who will be faced with our situation and would be unable or unwilling to collectively say “so far and no more.”

Let us take a cursory look at some of the soul-destroying statistics gathered from Vanguard newspaper and AFP reports: In the first week of January alone, Central Bank sold about N1.180 billion worth of foreign currency to 15 firms for the importation of power generating sets! Last year alone, average residential expenditure on fuelling power generators was N1.56 trillion. The estimate for commercial and industrial fuelling of generating sets was over N4 trillion! More than 400 of the about 500 industries Kano, the commercial hub of the North, had in the 1990s have closed down due largely to “chronic electricity shortages”. Last month, a 75 year-old man, Pa Michael Aiweriokhoe, his wife and four members of his family were found dead on a Monday morning in their home in Benin-city, of fume inhalation from the family’s electricity generating set. Amongst the dead were two young graduates, future of Nigeria. This unfortunate family join the statistics of thousands of such calamity the country bears yearly.

To underscore the government’s resignation to the situation, the 2009 budget allocates over N2 billion for the running of government generators!

So, one cannot but ask, what manner of country is this? How can a country live with such annual capital haemorrhage that far exceeds the cost of putting in place a sustainable uninterrupted nationwide power supply? What is wrong with our brains?

We are a people motivated solely by selfish and self-centred needs, and the thought of sacrificing personal interest in pursuit of common good is anathema to us. We are drunken in our individuality. Hence, you find in one house of eight flats, 8 generators if not 12 (allowing for back-ups), each competing in the display of value and capacity! Why is it impossible, you ask, for all four flats to come to an arrangement to trade in all 8 or 12 generators for 2 (one as standby) each with double the capacity of the foreseeable energy requirement of all the flats? It will save everyone a lot of money, and give the occupants a healthier environment. On some streets, in affluent sections of our cities, there are generators in every house, each with capacity to meet the energy requirement of all the houses on the entire street. It is said, and not without some validity, that the amount and capacity of generators in Lagos and Abuja alone can power all of Nigeria!

For answers, I turned to my brother, Professor Layi Fagbenle, an internationally recognised energy expert who was Director of Energy for Botswana for a few years and a consultant to the United Nations on energy. And I must add, the poor fellow continues to bear the burden, especially in Abacha years, of having a look-alike younger brother in me!

If he did it for Botswana, could he do it for Nigeria?

My brother demurred. Nigeria is a peculiar case, he said. The problem, he thinks, is more social than economic. The bane, he thinks, is corruption; deep-rooted, pervasive corruption at all levels, and grievous erosion of right societal values. He thinks Nigeria’s situation defies understanding. While he rates corruption in all forms as the foremost problem, he considers management inefficiency in some areas, general lack of maintenance culture, and lack of the spirit of a collective essence, as others. People do not baulk at cheating, stealing, vandalising, destroying public utilities and would any day sacrifice the common good for immediate personal gains.

He asks, why, for instance, would a country have three brand new gas turbine stations capable of providing 1,000 megawatts – Papalanto in Ogun State, Omotosho in Ondo State, and Deregu in Kogi State – installed for almost 2 years without functioning for one day, even as the nation groans in darkness? So, he says, it’s not a question of lack of maintenance alone, these are brand new turbines. Why could they not be put to work? Because no gas was supplied to them. Why? The answer to that will cough out other whys.

This is Nigeria. You can ask the same question of our Railways, our Water, and our Telecommunications, he concludes. The answer to our electricity, he asserts, is to be found in all these.

Nigeria with her installed capacity of 6,500 megawatts supplies power to Benin Republic and Niger Republic, yet these two countries do not face the energy problem Nigeria faces. Ghana only recently celebrated 10 years of uninterrupted power! So, again, what is the matter with us?

But I see some solutions:


Firstly, generators in all government offices, including the National Assembly, should be banned, the existing ones auctioned off. If we are to go back to the dark ages that we are steadily degenerating into, we may as well sprint to it – we may need to get there to start finding our way out properly. A government that keeps voting billions to fuel generators for its own comfort cannot have serious commitment to resolving the national power issue.

Secondly, importation of generators into the country should be banned. Perhaps necessity can be the mother of our own invention – and from the darkness, our scientists may invent a “home-grown” technology to harness our God-given energy for the common good.

Thirdly, the restructuring of the country is imperative. Even in the attempt to so-called privatise power, no one, it seems, wants to touch it, not even with a ten-foot pole – not with the present pseudo federation arrangement of the country. A restructured Nigeria may yield that sadly lacking spirit of nationalism.

After all, Yar’Adua may not be the problem – we all are. The power crisis is desperate and calls for drastic actions before real darkness overcomes us all.

sorry 4 Scolari!!!

That woman is sexy.


That being said, I'm going to say this again,


God loves the rich and powerful. That girl will have a good life.

Most Nigerians who live in Nigeria will not.


Ironic?, damn right

@kobojunkie,
i v seen ur explaination and definition of democracy which is in line with the dictionary's definition. i have also seen ur solutions to nigeria's problems.

permit me to tell u that u are living in a different planet.
i knew why i asked u how long u v been in the us. i v friends living there and i know how they reason.
what u have outlined here are more idealistic in nature.
who and how will the masses organise themselves to demand for accountability from the elected or ruling class? what do u do when u will be charged with felony and treason?
how many of ur family members are here in nigeria and how many of them are u going to give ur support to rise against the govt?
do u think if nigeria becomes good tomorrow, many nigerians will not com back to work here like u are working there in the us?
do u think u cannot be a hero if u can forget whatever u are doing there to come back and join force in making nigeria good?

i called ur suggestions idealistic because u and ur families will never be part of any form of revolution. i call it idealstic because our leaders have their own definition of democracy which is different from american democracy.

are u sending us to go and die on ur behalf for u to come back when everything is ok. it will not work for u. come back home so that we will do the work together.

Yoruba men
Igbo women
 What's wrong? if you are a yoruba woman and yoruba men are running from you marrying other tribes, it's not their fault, it's you ok? go ask grandma for villa why it's so.

They can't even provide 'soft landing' for Nigerians in Naija, them want provide 'soft landing' for returnees. These people dey craze no be small.