₦airaland Forum

[size=14pt]Bomb blast kills three near Nigeria election rally[/size]
Published on 3 March 2011 - 4:22pm

A blast near the venue of a ruling party election rally killed three people and injured 21 in a town near Nigeria's capital city of Abuja, the national police spokesman said Thursday.

"Three people died on the spot, 21 persons injured. The bomb was thrown by the people in a moving vehicle," Olusola Amore told AFP.

He said the attackers had targeted the Peoples Democratic Party rally taking place at Suleja in Niger State which borders the capital Abuja.

The bomb missed its target but ripped through a roadside vegetable market.

http://www.rnw.nl/africa/bulletin/bomb-blast-kills-three-near-nigeria-election-rally

buzugee:
well i have never paid any taxes in nigeria, i dont have a nigerian passport or birth certificate, i dont have any bill statements or bank statements from nigeria. i dont have any nigerian documentation to say i live or have lived there. i dont even live in nigeria. yeah all the cards are stacked against me right now. i will vote in spirit

Your case is surreal. lol
You're Nigerian in spirit anyway, that counts for something.

buzugee:
ok lets do the math.
2 million barrels per day * 365 * 80 * 5 is $292 billion. i think fashola is exaggerating eko oni baje oooooooooooooooooooooooooo

lol

Ibime:
@ OP, you've posed a legitimate question to the Northerners, so let me pose a question to the Niger-Deltans:

What if one of our own runs for President, we support him enmasse and then he rubbishes all our calls for constitution amendment and shows no political will to effecting the change that will give us land rights. Will our struggle ever hold legitimacy ever again?

In that case, whatever we want to achieve must be achieved by 2015 or we forever hold our peace. Can we point to any roadmap instigated by GEJ toward meeting our demands? He has already told us that the 1999 constitution is the best for Naija as it is a "democratic constitution".

We've gone from being vociferous haters of the PDP to being PDP greatest supporters without the attendant change in PDP structure that would trigger such. Is this all because of a chance for one of ours to "join the lootocracy" or because we notice evident change in the gathering of robbers called PDP?

Do not project yourself on others. There is no difference between political parties in Nigeria, except that PDP is national and the rest are regional. They are all corrupt and employ violence to various degree's. To single out the PDP is to be narrow minded.

I second what Agaba123 said earlier.

How can standalone machines detect double registration? Does it make sense?
Some of the arguments saying Jega said the DDC's could detect double registrations are either lying or wilfully tarnishing Jega's good name.

Standalone machines are basically dummies that will swallow any registration attempt. The only opportunities to detect double registrations would come during or after the data has been synchronised. And that is basically the process Jega is telling us the data is going through. It is also the safest way to collect data that includes numerous falsifications; those falsifications remain local to the machine.

Please, lets stop carrying backyard gist and abusing Jega, its not a clever thing to do. Nigerians, blame yourselves and the all pervasive love for cheating.

egift:
@ Beaf:
That list is no where near complete, but Muhammadu Buhari will definitely make such list. But am very glad Jonathan is a million miles near that list All he have is a Fisherman-Zoologist who causes a bad omen to his superiors. And when they are gone, we consider him Lucky! This is not a casino in Las Vegas, ok!

I am surprised that an Igbo man can join in the bigoted "fisherman" talk. You are indeed a fool, it is your family that are fishermen, not us.

Lagos and and Abuja are different from all other Nigerian cities, cos they were developed with federal money as federal capitals. Therefore, everyone is entitled to a piece, or as much as they can grab.

Kobojunkie:
Not entirely true. The Yar adua administration, as well as the Obasanjo administration made us similar promises. I believe it was on Obasanjo's watch that we got stories of Nigeria getting it's own satellite monitoring system etc.

Don't give us any of these brain-dead interjections you made up entirely in your own head.
Quotations and links are in order here, or we treat this as another attempt to start a rumour.

9ijaMan:
Coming from Tribune, I'm not really surprised. The same Babangida who is now GEJ's father abi?

You must be a joker, GEJ only showed respect as is practiced in our culture.
IBB's people moved enmasse into Buhari's camp between a fortnight and a week ago. Buhari is the new face of the cabal.

hannie:
nawao . . .

I will love to see GEJ's reaction to this . .

at least when Mutallab fumbled, the government of the day reacted

The incident must be condemned and investigated, however strictly put, it falls in the camp of Delta state govt, not the FG.
. . .Two things though; Mutallab was not a minister and the govt of the day was led by GEJ (even if hampered).

PhysicsMHD:
I didn't say funding could go to random members of the public.

I wasn't clear, so let me make it clearer. You have an engineering department at a top Nigerian university. The engineering profs there write articles. The articles get published. They go to conferences and present papers. They plan the curricula, they review articles, they lecture, they guzzle coffee, they do academic stuff, etc. etc., but they could also receive funding from the government to research specific areas (they could get large grants) that the government thought were worthy of focus. Why do I suggest that this wider academic community is who the government should include, rather than just those engineers who have applied to and gotten jobs at government research institutes? Because in general, those guys at top universities in a country tend to be unusually bright. This is done in the U.S. with regard to certain areas, such as nuclear energy research.

Thats another matter entirely and a valid concern indeed. I recall a friend that returned to Nigeria all starry eyed from Europe to do his bit for our development by working in a uni and burying himself in research. Mistake!
This guy is a genius, but by the time the Nigerian system had dealt had dealt him some manful blows, he scuttled off back to Europe, broke as a church rat, career saved only by his brains. We warned him against returning, but poor thing never understood; sometimes intelligence is an impediment.

That said, govt is looking at exactly what you've said above and working toward setting 1% of our GDP aside for Research and Development (public and private sector). Hopefully it will come to fruition, the story is here:
http://www.tribune.com.ng/sun/index.php/news/3225-fg-to-set-aside-one-per-cent-of-gdp-for-research

You can work out the index for any country with some guesswork and the article below.

[size=14pt]The Shoe-Thrower's index [/size]
Feb 9th 2011, 14:50 by The Economist online
An index of unrest in the Arab world

IN THIS week's print edition we ran a table showing a number of indicators for members of the Arab League. By adding a few more and ascribing different weights to them we have come up with the Shoe-Thrower's index, which aims to predict where the scent of jasmine may spread next. Some factors are hard to put a number on and are therefore discounted. For instance, dissent is harder in countries with a very repressive secret police (like Libya). The data on unemployment were too spotty to be comparable and so this important factor is discounted too. We took out the Comoros and Djibouti, which do not have a great deal in common with the rest of the group, and removed the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Somalia for lack of data. The chart below is the result of ascribing a weighting of 35% for the share of the population that is under 25; 15% for the number of years the government has been in power; 15% for both corruption and lack of democracy as measured by existing indices; 10% for GDP per person; 5% for an index of censorship and 5% for the absolute number of people younger than 25. Jordan comes out surprisingly low on the chart, which suggests the weighting might need to be tweaked. Post suggestions in the comments below and we will refine it.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/daily_chart_arab_unrest_index

Reference data here:
http://www.economist.com/node/18065663?story_id=18065663

[size=14pt]Can Data Predict Political Revolutions?[/size]
Mar 1 2011, 7:30 AM ETBy Richard Florida26

First Tunisia, then Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, and Morocco seemingly spontaneously combusted from the bottom up. Last weekend there were online calls for mass protests in Beijing, Shanghai, and other major Chinese cities; Libya is in a full-blown state of revolution as of this writing, with much of the country in the hands of rebels and government security forces firing on demonstrators in Tripoli.

Clearly, 2011 already ranks as one of history's great revolutionary epochs alongside 1848, 1918, 1949, and 1968. Something powerful and seemingly irresistible is being unleashed. But what is it exactly?

The conventional explanation is that frustration with corrupt regimes has been pushed to the tipping point, propelled by legions of unemployed young people who are connected as they never have been before by social media like Facebook and Twitter.

The "Shoe-Throwers' Index" (see chart below) is The Economist's attempt to quantify all of these factors. It is weighted to the age structure of the population (specifically, the percent of people under 25 years of age) and accounts for the number of years a government has been in power, its lack of democracy and excess of corruption, the prevalence of censorship, and the level of economic development as measured by GDP per person. The Economist notes that Jordan comes out surprisingly low on the index and suggests that its weighting might benefit from some additional tweaks.

https://www.creativeclass.com/creative_class/_wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ME1.jpg

Inspired by The Economists' efforts and emboldened by its self-criticism, I decided to try to build an index of my own--the Index of Potential Unrest (IPU). With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, we pulled together statistics from 152 nations and sorted them according to eight key variables: human capital levels in combination with percent of the workforce in the creative class, life satisfaction, GDP per capita, perceptions about local labor market conditions, Internet access, freedom, tolerance, and honesty in elections. The data comes from the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, and the Gallup Organization. The map below shows how these nations stack up.

https://assets.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/richard_florida/assets_c/2011/03/Unrest_Index1_post-thumb-600x465-43498.jpg

The IPU does reasonably well in predicting the unrest and revolutionary activism that are spreading across the Middle East today. Among the highest-scorers are the West Bank/Gaza Strip (.75), Yemen (.75), Egypt (.74), and Iraq (.72). Seven more Middle Eastern and North African nations have relatively high IPU scores: Morocco (.68), Lebanon (.64), Syria (.61), Jordan (.61), Algeria (.6), Tunisia (.57), and Libya (.51), while Saudi Arabia (.4) and Bahrain (.4) show more moderate levels. On the other hand, Kuwait (.23), Qatar (.22), and the United Arab Emirates (.21) score in the same range as Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada. Obviously this metric is not infallible--things are much less stable in Bahrain than its moderate score (.4) would suggest; Libya's score fails to reflect the outsized role of its insane dictator.

That said, it's interesting to note that the real powder kegs are not even in the Middle East. The nation with the highest ranking on the IPU is Togo (.93), followed by Mongolia (0.83), Armenia (.81), Haiti (., and the Ukraine (.79). China's IPU score of .51 is on par with Libya's.

On the other side of the ledger, the world's most stable nations are the Netherlands (.15), Norway (.15), Australia (.17), Finland (.18) and Canada (.19). The United States is in 20th place (.3).

In my next post, I will add a new wrinkle to the broader story of what's been driving these waves of revolution, focusing on the unprecedented role played by techies, social media types, videographers, musicians, the intelligentsia and artists, as well as business, legal, and medical professionals who make up the creative class.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/predicting-revolution-the-index-of-potential-unrest/71743/

Nicklee:
I don't usually leave comments recklessly on nairaland but I can't stand Beaf's outrightly silly and immoral posts anymore. This is plain craziness. Maybe I have lived too long away from Nigeria not to realize that people like Beaf are the order of the day. If this is the case, my apologies. Otherwise, will you shut up Mr (or Ms) Beaf?

No, you shut up. You cannot unmake the truth by trying to bully others.

KADUNA-Supporters of the presidential candidate of Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari(rtd), yesterday, beat up people and vandalised cars as they recklessly drove on motor bikes and commuters buses, which led to the death of five persons in northern Kaduna metropolis.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/03/5-die-as-buhari-flags-off-north-west-campaign/

9ijaMan:
Apparently GEJ gave a stoning order when you guys murdered 14 people in PH abi?

They weren't killed by party thugs.
May their souls RIP.

9ijaMan:
All those who died were no where near the venue of the rally. So what exactly is your point?
At least the CPC did not shut the doors on crowd at the rally venue in order to prevent them from deserting as is always the case in PDP rallies.

You are even too lazy to read. Why not read the article first before you start making id!otic statements.

Brain transplant! Anybody? lol

Lets just say Buhari's stone throwers and thugs ran rampant, lynching everything that moved in Kaduna. We are waiting for him to give stoning orders next, or maybe even to become the leader of Boko Haram.

volasunkan:
Now I see you have multiple issues with Tinubu.Is he a criminal?In your own world,he is.But frankly,this is not your world.Becareful what you do to your consciense?It's sheared with so much hatred for your fellowman.Kai,I will rather die than have this amount of hatred for a person!You are fighting for yourself,igbo and the 'fishermen'?You must be the messiah we await!(lol).Tinubu is a strong pillar of democrazy in Nigeria.He fought teeth and nail to make sure Nigeria does not become a one party nation.He,through,his consistent political beliefs,revived the opposition,now everyone is suddenly realising that pdp can be defeated.The people stands to benefit with such robust political development and i beg you to sheathe your swords.While we get sucked up in this PHD tendencies,we are missing a golden chance to rub minds and stimulate constructive debate that can benefit the igbo and fishermen(afterall fishing is a legitimate profession and there is dignity in labour).Orji Uzo kalu had the chance when ppa had 2 states while tinubu's party had 1 state but right now,ppa is dead,orji uzo kalu is fighting serious corruption case,yet Tinubu is waxing stronger.His party has grown from 1 to 3 and still more likely.He surrounds himself with highly intelligent people,he invests in people with the best ideas irrespective of where you come from.Imagine,Ben Akabueze,an igboman who was discovered by tinubu is still in the saddle in Lagos as the commissioner of economic planning and budget,even years after tinubu left office!Tinubu will overcome.

The long and short is that Tinubu is a criminal and no excuse on Earth can clean that stain.
As for "fishermen," maybe the likes of Tinubu are too bigotted and high from being "strong pillar of democrazy" that he can insult a whole region and all its ethnic groups. Yeah, "strong pillars of democrazy" must be not only obnoxious, but mentally unbalanced also.

PhysicsMHD:
If it did use some "zany" technology, but didn't have a significant impact on Nigeria and Nigerians after all the money was spent to incorporate/develop/utilize that technology, I would be against the government directly funding it through government agencies and parastatals instead of something like an open competition from all actual and potential researchers in Nigeria. Nigeria has manufacturing engineers right? Engineering profs with Ph.Ds (or even just master's) in mechanical engineering with a focus on manufacturing, right? So who's to say that the particular govt individuals at those agencies are the people to come up with that revolutionary use of some "zany" technology (like some new method of nanoassembly) that could make revolutionary improvements to brick making, rather than the rest of the academic community of Nigeria? The same thing applies to the time management system with regard to electrical engineers, computer scientists, etc.

The technology you are mocking came out of our research institutes. And guess who mans those places? Its "manufacturing engineers right? Engineering profs with Ph.Ds (or even just master's) in mechanical engineering with a focus on manufacturing," so they know what they are doing.
You might not know just how much our technology institutes have influenced the small scale business World in Nigeria; dude, there are people who go there to license tech for all sorts of purposes.

In addition to the above, I must say that your argument is now wavering, cos the items that were announced for promotion didn't come from the public (whom you would like to see paid more attention), they came from research institutes, therefore funding for them could only go to the research institutes and not some random member of the public. If you think more needs to be done to make science an tech more attractive, lower the entry points, provide incentives to the private sector etc; thats all vaild, but no reason to mock technology without knowing the full details.

^
His thugs have started the lynching.

Buhari sent thugs around to burn destroy and pillage across Kaduna. These deaths were not due to any accident, they were murders by Buhari's thugs.

Supporters of the presidential candidate of Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari(rtd), yesterday, beat up people and vandalised cars as they recklessly drove on motor bikes and commuters buses, which led to the death of five persons in northern Kaduna metropolis

A party of stone throwers and neanderthals, led by a wild eyed sharia zealot.

^
Would your mind change if the time management system implemented RFID? Or AI? Or some other zany technology, maybe something that hasn't even been thought of previously?
I wouldn't smirk at anything until I've seen it and its been explained to me.

againstGEJ:
Is this what Tunde Bakare will say on his pulpit to his congregation?

Thats one man that sold his soul.

volasunkan:
I am fully aware that if you are invited by code of conduct,it is largely to establish your culpability or innocence which the body is staturily empowered to do.I subscribe fully that this body be given freehand to discharge its duty,if Tinubu,I repeat,if Tinubu,is proven guilty,let him face the music!
What still baffles me is that,
WHY DID IT TAKE THEM 12 YEARS TO REPORT HIM TO CCB?
WHY IS IT DURING THE THICK OF ELECTIONS THAT THIS CCB KITE IS BEING FLOWN?
WHY IS IT TAKEN AND ORCHESTRATED BY PDP AND ITS AGENTS WHEN EVEN THE CCB IS YET TO EVEN SERVE TINUBU A SUMMON?
WHY IS IT THAT,EVEN ON NAIRALAND,IT IS THE SAME SET OF PEOPLE REPORTING UNSUBSTANTIATED ALLEGATIONS AGAINST TINUBU?
DO YOU EXPECT A GOD-FEARING PERSON TO KEEP QUIET AT THIS OBVIOUS CONSPIRACY TO DEMONISE TINUBU?
WOULD YOU NOT HAVE REACTED THE SAME WAY WITH YOUR CONSCIENSE WHEN ROSSIKE POSTED A LIE THAT THE ORIENTAL HOTEL IS OWNED BY TINUBU?
Mind you,i have taken time to read your posts(Beaf),it is actually not 'beaf',it is venom all through against Tinubu while you promote GEJ.While I respect your right to freely promote your candidate,your conscience will serve you right if you dont offend man and God by promoting an agenda,created,packaged and oiled by people who hate Tinubu and would do EVERYTHING to bring him down!These pdp guys will never wait even a day to get Tinubu in jail if a concrete evidence!

Venom against Tinubu? Dude, you got that 100%. The fact is that he is a criminal.

Aside that Tinubu is a drug pushing, thieving crook; there are 17 states in the South of Nigeria, bigots like Tinubu are quarreling with the Igbo's and they have dubbed the rest of us fishermen. Is there any sense in isolation? Dude, there are going to be very long lasting consequences, keep defending Tinubu.

babaearly:
With the way GEJ's bashing is increasing in every inch, its not going to be long before the presido's army (beaf,againstgej,nsiman and co-conspirators) send a hack team to bring down nairaland. If they can, they would take down each anti-GEJ nairalander one by one. But they can't so they will just hack nl down. Thats my fear oh, so lets tone it down a lil bit.

You must be a real clown. If I'd wanted to "say hello" to you right on your laptop, I'd have done it long since, but we aren't stone throwing neanderthals like you lot.
No we are far from the pack of unpolished thugs and id!ots we have discovered most of you to be.

. . .Rather, we are the smartest of the smart, polished and swarve. We scramble your thick brains and snatch your women. lol

PhysicsMHD:
Time management system?

I know Nigerians have problems with time management, but I think we should fix that through discipline, not using money that could used on better things.

As for brick making machines, do they really need to go and fund research to develop new brick making machines? It seems like reinventing the wheel for no purpose other than to say that you reinvented the wheel.

. . .

You don't seem to have a clue about inventions and creativity. I am 100% certain that the trainers you are wearing are covered by several patents, same goes for flatscreen TV (which to you, is re-inventing the wheel, cos cathode ray tubes existed).
Your excuse for pointing fingers is weak and painful. Why do you think new time management systems and brick making technologies cannot be invented. We are our own enemy as far as development is concerned, we tear anybody in sight with ideas into little pieces. Its really wrong.

1025:
@beaf,
how long will it take your jonathan to start developing his own part of the country? maybe 28 yrs as the president. jonathan does not have any developmental ideas and plans so give him 16 yrs and nothing will happen. a fisherman is a fisherman.

You must be either a fool or your news comes from akara spots. There is a refinery, a petrochemichal plant, an international airport for oil execs, tourism development for one of Nigeria's most historical areas etc.

Dude, run along and throw stones with id!ots like babapupa. Fvking ethnic bigot.

Lynch?
Buhari remains an unchanged bushman. There are laws in the country. What will he suggest next, sharia style stoning?

PhysicsMHD:
For the first time ever I'm going to have to completely cosign Kobojunkie.

It's even ironic that the Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Mohammed Abubakar, happens to be a Northerner, and all this ambition and scientific potential is rotting in the North while he approves government funded projects to develop time management systems and brick making machines.

Dude, those things could hold novel ideas and inventions. It doesn't matter if they perform mundane tasks, afterall there are patents for blenders to grind pepper, or is the difference just that the "time management systems and brick making machines" you mentioned are Nigerian, instead of foreign?

In the meantime, the rockets in this topic might not have a single piece of novel technology in them. My take is that we encourage all science an tech in the country, so long as it will create jobs and make life easier. Thats how other nations develop.

@OP

[img]http://mouthswiredshut.files./2008/12/psychedelic-mushroom.gif?w=265&h=360[/img]

www.nairaland.com/attachments/180447_ROTFLMAO_gif3d0c775232c7f27cf80592785b9635b6

[img]http://mouthswiredshut.files./2008/12/psychedelic-mushroom.gif?w=265&h=360[/img]

www.nairaland.com/attachments/180447_ROTFLMAO_gif3d0c775232c7f27cf80592785b9635b6

Well done to the guy! Rocketry is a very dangerous pursuit and Shehu Saleh Balami has demonstrated beyond doubt that he has the strength of mind to pursue his dreams.
We can only pray that "fellow" Nigerians do not line up to frustrate him with their "clever" talk and their pull down syndrome,

Any sort of list of leaders that does not contain the likes of Olisa Agbakoba, Festus Keyamo, Tai Solarin, Gani Fawehinmin and Wole Soyinka is a non-starter. Those guys are our real leaders at street level.

[s]1. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
2. Nuhu Ribadu
3. Umaru Musa Yar'Adua
4. Muhammadu Buhari[/s]
5. Attahiru Jega

Just one is left standing of the crowd above.