₦airaland Forum

I think so

@meexteriox
Oil spilages
Enviromental degradation
Unrest
These issues should be handled well otherwise our state wil go the way of niger delta.

Believe in nigeria at your peril

True statement

@JJYOU

You think say people dey vote PDP .If people vote dey count 4 naija you go dey suprised at results.

@morpheus24
What do you mean

Over the last week, Canadian oil giant Addax Petroleum announced that it had struck new oil deposits in the Njaba Basin in Imo State. Like any other oil company, Addax celebrated the news and began drawing up plans to cash in on its discovery, with obviously no mention of what impact the finding of this Aladdin’s Cave will have on Nigeria.

In a sane and rational world, one would assume that such a find would be good news for the Nigerian economy as it would boost export earnings, create jobs, act as a spur for the local environment, create associated employment and serve as a catalyst for regeneration across Imo State. However, our experience in Nigeria tells us that this is unlikely to be the case as history has shown us that such finds have done next to nothing for our people.

Apart from the overwhelming evidence from the Niger Delta to prove that oil discovery means nothing to the lives of the people in whose community it is found, we actually know that in many cases, it actually leads to worsening living standards. Apart from this, we also know that oil has led to the decimation of many local industries that thrived before the black oil curse was cast on our people.

Across the Niger Delta, we used to have thriving fishing, basket-making, weaving, canoe-building and net-making industries before slicks and gas firing decimated the region. Since 1958, oil has rendered millions of people unemployed across the Niger Delta, with the petroleum industry failing to absorb even one tenth of them.

Addax Petroleum currently produces approximately 6,000 barrels per day from the Ossu and Izombe fields in OML124 in Imo State and with this latest find that figure is likely to increase significantly. What nobody has told us is how or even whether the lives of the people of Imo State will be improved as a result of the discovery.

Knowing that cynicism has become a national pastime across Nigeria, I would hate to join the ranks of the naysayers, so I am inclined to give Addax the benefit of the doubt in certain regards. They must have seen what is going on to the south of Imo State, we now have a 13% derivation formula in place and the Niger Delta Development Commission is trying to build critical infrastructure across Nigeria’s nine oil-producing states.

Having said that, it remains to be seen if Addax and our administrators have learnt from past mistakes. However, for arguments sake, let us give Ufot Ekaette the benefit of the doubt. Oil in itself is not the main problem as far as I am concerned but what makes it a curse is that it has stifled our national development. As of now, 95% of Nigeria’s export earnings come from crude oil sales and there are no plans whatsoever to alter this.

So long as the taps keep flowing, we as a people are content to sit back, live off the proceeds and delude ourselves into thinking that crude is an infinite resource. We have made no serious attempt to diversify our economy, get manufacturing going, revive agriculture, develop a modern tourist industry, learn how to provide world-class services or explore the plethora of opportunities solid minerals offer.

Now and again we hear half-hearted proclamations from government ministers but on the evidence so far, this is nothing but political posturing. Apart from maybe Lagos State, no other state in the federation is capable of sustaining itself without the handout known as federal allocation.

If the finance ministry in Abuja decided that for one month it would not share out revenue, our states would become paralysed. Not only would workers’ salaries not be paid but the actual state structure would freeze. There would be no schools, health centres or even state houses of assembly functioning.

Unlike most other oil-producing countries, crude oil has created an unprecedented dependency culture in Nigeria that is actually very frightening. What right has a state got to its existence if it cannot meet its running costs out of its own internally generated revenue?

There is something morally repugnant about a state governor shamelessly going to queue in Abuja every month for federal handouts with no long-term plans to ever make his state financially independent. I would go as far as saying that having the ability to run your own affairs without federal aid should be criteria for the existence of a state.

Fortunately for us in Nigeria, none of our 36 states are located in barren deserts where nothing grows, there are no resources and economic activity is impossible. Our inability to generate non-oil revenue is down to nothing but a lack of political will on the part of our leaders.

Seeing how long this has gone on for, it is hard to reach any other conclusion than the view that we are never going to get off our collect behinds and do anything about it until the oil runs out. They say necessity is the mother or invention, so it may just be that without oil, the bony hand of hunger might force us into getting our collective acts together.

Countries with similar climatic conditions as Nigeria such as Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, India and Thailand, make nothing less than $20bn a year from agricultural export earnings. There is simply no reason why Nigeria cannot at least match this. With the amount of arable land we have at our disposal, revenue from our farm produce exports should easily surpass what we currently get from oil.

If Malaysia can generate $10bn from palm oil export sales alone, nothing is stopping Nigeria with more than 10 times the amount of cultivatable land from raising at least $50bn annually. Given that the Malaysians got their seedlings from Nigeria originally, this alone should shame us into getting our act together. What does it take to produce hybrid seeds, woo commercial farmers, get our smallholders to form co-operatives and introduce semi-processing?

Leaving agriculture aside, are countries such as Myanmar, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh where the likes of Nike and Reebok manufacture most of their goods any more technologically advanced than Nigeria? Is there anything stopping our erstwhile commerce and industry minister Achike Udenwa from wooing such companies to outsource production to Nigeria?

Across the banking and telecommunications world, India has stolen a march on everyone by attracting call centres and customer service outfits. I believe Nigerian English sounds more coherent to the average Westerner than that of our Asian cousins and we should have been in there first.

Wherever one looks, opportunities are limitless if we care to search. Our problem is simply that with the black gold flowing from the Niger Delta, there is no incentive to develop other areas of our economy. As a result, our export earnings are $60bn when they should be $300bn and our gross domestic product is $200bn when it should be $900bn.

As long as 140m people are scrambling for these meagre resources, Nigeria will never be at ease with itself and all the ensuing socio-economic problems that come with poverty will continue to afflict us. Until it is made mandatory for states to source their own income, I do not see things changing for the better in the near future.

Maybe having a constitutional provision that allows the president to declare a state of emergency in any state that cannot fund its own annual budget might just do the trick. Whatever short-term problems this will lead to, I believe it is necessary to end this dependency culture that has got us locked into a vicious cycle of take and spend.

Ayo Akinfe

aakinfe@aol.com

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/index.php/content/view/11383/55

Quite frankly I do not think this is a good development for my state. especially looking at what is happening in the delta at the moment.

I talk am say Becomerich go soon strke

@.B.O.S.S.
so you think i cannot differentiate between you (.B.O.S.S.) and B.O.S.S.

You are a huge joke.

Listen You Lot,


Port Harcourt does NOT belong to the Ibos. Okay? Comprende? It belongs to the decent Ikwerre people. The Ikwerres are NOT Ibos either. Why lay a claim to the Ikwerres if those people are constantly rejecting your claims? Leave it, okay, enough is enough!

You guys can but only create resentment amongst other Nigerians in view of the way you've chosen to carry on with yourselves. What's all this feeling of superiority? - the BIG CHIP ON YOUR SHOULDERS, I mean. Why oh why? I don't suppose you are suffering from some kind of complex or are you? I hope not 'cos we are all Nigerians.

I wish to God that you guys would STOP claiming all things and everything. People have been bombarded in this Forum with Ibo claims of this and that, such as:

Ibos are the descendants of the Jews
Ibos are the descendants of the Ethiopians
Ibos are the descendants of the Sudanese
Ibos are the only fair-skinned tribe in Nigeria
Ibos are the most friendly tribe in Nigeria
Ibos are the most educated in Nigeria
Ibos are highly aspiring
Ibos are the businessmen and women of Nigeria
Ibos own Kwale
Ibos own Port Harcourt
The Ikwerres are Ibos
Ibos built pyramids
Ibos this Ibos that, the list goes on and on! I really get sick of all this.

Why don't you lot find something better to do with yourselves instead of all this cheap talk? Why don't you just be proud of who you are and capitalise on your strengths and just carry on with your daily lives? Why don't you? Why the air of superiorty? Why the chip on your shoulders? Why?

You talk about education, I haven't yet seen anything useful that you guys have contributed to the betterment of this Forum in terms of education, except politics and culture.

Nobody has really said anything extremely bad about you Ibos - and many examples abound. I have spoken out on so many occassions in defence of you lot in this Forum even though I'm not Ibo.

What I'm saying is that I don't dislike you BUT I'm sick to the back teeth as to how you guys have chosen to carry on with yourselves. As you can see in all my postings, I have tried to be as objective as possible by calling a spade a spade and not try to knock anybody simply on account of the one's tribal grouping.

PLease STOP this carry on and be proud of who you are. Be proud of being a Nigerian or Biafran if that makes you happy.



kiwi992.

My guy if you are done look for a rope.You know what to do next

.B.O.S.S Impersonation

Noone in his or her right mind, honestly speaking, someone who wakes up and thinks and not someone who wakes up and doesnt even know how to use his or her brain, noone like that will call Nigeria a failed state - people who are so ignorant, people who are blinded to opportunities, people who have been deceived by the little comfort that the life abroad offers, these are the people who - for the reason of not being able to fit back into the system, calls Nigeria a failed state, a doomed for entity, and a country where nothing works - these are the people who needs help.

Thousands of Chinese, South Africans, Americans, British, Indians are rushing to Nigeria as a land of opportunity and loads of them are making it in a big way in the same country that Nigerians have written off as a place where nothing works - please how do you explain that to me? You sit down abroad, and thinks up issues in your own mind and calls it reality? how can you call it reality when all you experience about the country is what has been conjured up in your mind by foreign journalists and so called diasporic jouranlists who sit behind cyber space to write about what they know nothing about? How foolish and myopic that can be? Thousands make millions on a daily basis in Nigeria, and yet - someone sits behind a 17inch computer to tell me that Nigeria is a failed state - honestly, I pity such kind of a people, they need help and they need it fast

.






Only someone who does not have a brain can make such idiotic statement.Thousands compared to up 140m people?After the millions 'the thousand' people make why are the roads bad? what is the guaranty that after making that million i will have light in my home from phcn? Why should i buy generator to provide myself light?The so called millionares in the country why would they send their children abroad to study?Why should i sink borehole in my house to give constant access to water?What is govt job in the first instance? Moronic thinker

It is because nigeria is a country most citizen love to hate and hate to love because nigeria is not what it should be.

This thread is not a thread to argue about if ikwerre is ibo or not.check these out.orka-awka,okunano-awkunanaw,nwabara-wabara,jaja-wachuku-nwachukwu.which of these is correct?we all have rights to spell how we wish.even if it is established that[b] ikwerre is igbo,it does not mean that ikwerreland belongs to igbos.[/b]

And who are igbos in this context?

How are we sure i_laugh is not benefitting from the rotten system hence the 'ostriching'.Even running nigeria on generators some people will also benefit from it.

The title should read "My Frustrations In making Nigerians Believe That I Am Fighting Corruption"

If you don't know the present state of Botswana or haven't visited the country why opening you [b]big gob asking which one be Botswana? Apart from South African, based on what I had seen first hand Botswana is now the most developed African nation and still doing well. Their democracy is as good as any in the world, their corruption index is as low as that of the the scandanavian nations. Botswana discovered Diamond in the late 80s and judiciously make good use of the income from it.
As we speak, Botswana makes over 20 billion dollars in tourism alone annually, they have free medical care, free education at all level, uninterupted electric supply, their national railway is 21st century equiped and a metro service is near completion for Gabarone city (their capital), borehole is a foreign word to them and all these despite the fact that they are a landlocked nation with no access to the coast[/b].

They have completely tranformed their country within a space of ten years without telling themselves that Rome wasn't build in a day, a usual Nigerian phrase used in excusing their incompetence and lack of vision. Being patriotic doesn't mean being stupid and blind. Nigerians often hype themselves, calling themselve the big brother no African nation give a monkey about. Despite billion from oil. No single thing will anyone point out to be working in Nigeria when Nigeria are fighting with the like of Chad in term of poverty and infrastrutures.
Many Nigerians even the educated still thinks that an ambulance is for carrying dead corpes from the mortuary to the home town on hot friday afternoon, because in 2009, their are still no emergency services in Nigeria in the whole the 36 states and Abuja.
No Nigerian airport as we speak has a modern scanning system and still uses bare hand to search peoples luggages and often dispalying personal items to the view of the world in the process which can be totally embarrassing.
At Enugu airport in 2009, the flight schedules are written with white chalk on a blackboard.

I was in Tunisia in 1994 during the African cup of nations and was amazed to see that the streets of Tunis are not only sweeped but are washed every night as I looked out from my hotel everynight for that two week duration, while even in Abuja, Nigeria is swimming in refuse dumps and leprosy infected beggars.
Wake up people, wake up!!!!!!!!

Correct yarns       

It's a shame Nigerians have to feel this way but all goes down to bad leadership.  What could be done? Really? This question keeps recurring. Is it that hard to call for a revlution? Ukraine themeslves have done it, Thailand did it, Greece did it. Why can't we do it?

Nigerians cannot do revolution because most of us still see things in a myopic way.The only revolution that can be done in this country is if every ethnic group carry out a revolution against its own leaders THEMSELVES AT THE SAME TIME so that there would not be mutual suspicion.I wonder if this scenario can ever occur otherwise we would be faced with post nzeogwu situation and you know that led to.

@Charlesmud
If nigeria is as developed as south africa and egypt then why are you advocating for breakaway state for yorubas

Nigerians are tired of being treated inhumanely. Enough of these beastly treatments and unwarranted brutalities! Nigerians reject being treated like dogs all over the world Nigerians from now onwards, must make non-Nigerians do one of two things, respect us or fear the consequences of a lack.
24hours after the incident, the representatives of Nigeria in Kiev, Ukraine, are still contemplating on what to do and ignoring calls from Nigerian citizens here. As they are constrained by bureaucracy protocol. But, again, thankfully, the rest of us, do not have those constraints and we are speaking out and we want the world to know that a Nigerian's life was illegally and violently ended in Ukraine.
By law we can not engage the system here and the police are requesting the presence of our embassy.
Protection and preservation of Nigerian citizens is the primary duty of the government of Nigeria, and therefore, Nigerian diplomats worldwide. This duty is sacrosanct.

All Nigerians, diplomats, entire hierarchy and levels of government in Nigeria must ensure, that the killers of any Nigerian do not go unpunished. Nigerians and Nigeria must draw a line in the sand regarding the sanctity of the lives of Nigerian citizens.

[quote][/quote]Which diplomats or government?  People who are not interested or cannot fish out killers that kill their own citizens within the country and you think they give a hoot about a nigerian killed in ukraine.Have they arrested the people that killed that edo guy in spain?My guy just forget about the 'nigerian government' because they do not care about nigerians in general.

May the guys soul rest in peace.

Ekiti and Osun have very close boundaries and yet the former are known for their killer instinct and violence while the later is known for their hospitality.

I'm beginning to miss Osun and millions of goats roaming the streets of ilesha.

In no particular order;

south africa
egypt
tunisia
morrocco
botswana

For people that want to talk about potential of what use is potential if we cannot make good use of it.Like they say "a bottle of beer in the hand is better than 2 in the fridge".

If Adedibu was alive, he would've arrested the situation in Ekiti peacefully.

So Abedibu was a peace broker?

Becomerich go and rest yorubas are not interested in living nigeria

Well kobojunkie you have made your point but i am still conviced that nigeria have fundamental issues we have to solve first before any other thing can be done to salvage the situation at the moment.Coming back to this generator issue i just do not know whether to laugh or to cry.

For those still looking for solution, all I have said so far is that we push for EQUALITY FOR ALL ; Equality and Justice for all regardless of sex or creed or social status. Is this hard to get from all this?

My dear it is difficult when diffrent sections of the country have diffrent attitudes and outlook to life.