₦airaland Forum

Chrisbenogor:
Dear beaf,
I am well aware of your antics about the Niger Delta, while I sympathize with most of the points you have made I strongly believe that nothing has been done with those we have received so far. You want us to talk criminality in the ND? Your leaders would head the list. Even the contracts being given to the local contractors still end up on the tables of their pseudo companies. The ND is a mess true, a lot of people are culpable, I personally want us to clean our house first, so if those goodies eventually come it would spread to everyone, no?

On the issue of pollution I agree with you, but please tell me how those laws would cascade into wiping out these vultures?

Nigerians can scream themselves black and blue to assuage themselves of any guilt, but a watching World passed judgement years ago. Any senseless screaming without finding solutions is the same as having a bath in murky water.

. . .By the way, the Niger Delta problem is not about money. It is about polltion and its effects. There are two very important facts that the average Nigerian must be aware off:

[list]
[li]The Niger Delta is the Worlds most polluted oil producing region[/li]
[li]The Niger Delta is the Worlds most polluted oil wetlands[/li]
[li]The Niger Delta is Earth's largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions[/li]
[li]The amount of gas flared in the Niger Delta can provide electricity to 40% of Africa annually[/li]
[li]It is pollution that destroys the water and land and cuts off traditional livelihoods, leading to poverty[/li]
[li]Oil seeps into underground water sources and contaminates it, the result is various cancers[/li]
[li]Gas flaring unleashes toxic gases leading to acid rain, respiratory illnesses and cancers[/li]
[li]Nigeria loses about US $2.5 billion annually from gas flaring (2001 estimates)[/li]
[/list]

texazzpete:
*sigh*

I have no desire to re-create the unending verbal battle you and oyb seem to enjoy. Which is why i asked you to keep things civil.
I've never been paid or instructed by anyone to air my own opinions. this sort of hasty conclusion is not new to me. I've been accused of being a paid agent of Mobil before. i've been accused of being an Igbo Hater before. I've been accused of being Yoruba before. I've been accused of being sponsored by Americans before. i've been accused of being a zionist puppet (that still baffles me  )

This is Nairaland, where it is seen as a fate worse than death to lose an argument, so people tend to accuse others who don't fall into their line of thinking of being 'paid agents'.

Please stay on topic, please. I live and work in the Niger Delta. My 2 weeks old baby daughter was born in the Niger Delta. it concerns me how the situation in this region plays out. So i have a vested interest in peace in this region.
it just happens to be my opinion that the people of this region have a MASSIVE role to play in whether they obtain that peace and prosperity we all desire. If you people continue to try to offload responsibility to others, this peace will elude you for a long time to come.

Since 2007 to date, a staggering number of pipelines have been blown open in waterways and creeks that should ideally support commercial fishing. Thousands of meters of flowlines have been harvested. Hundreds of holes have been punched in flowing pipes to siphon crude. Each of these activities results in massive leaks of crude and condensate to the environment. I cannot produce detailed statistics, but these leaks dwarf those caused by corrosion and 'poor production practices'.

tensor777:
^Look you can't expect me to swallow all this media reports coming some 16 years after the incident. Even at that its all about what Okutimo did and said and not what the whistle blower Ejiogu actually did.
Ask yourself what are Ejiogu's motives for coming up with this spurious piece of revisionist claptrap against his fotmer comrade in arms?
In any case the Ogoni 4 were not simply executed but quite barbarically almost torn to pieces by a frenzied mob of souped up youths.

There was panic at the Ikotun, Lagos-based Synagogue Church of All Nations last Sunday when a man with a knife forced himself through the crowd of worshippers and attempted to stab the controversial pastor, Prophet T.B Joshua, on the pulpit while he was preaching.

Louise allegedly hid the knife in his waist and was heading for the altar where T.B. Joshua was preaching when vigilant ushers suspected his moves and stopped him. When he was searched by the security men, a sharp knife was found on him and was promptly handed over to policemen.

tensor777:
You know you are just posting nonsense there as the Ogoni 4 were in fact guesomely and barbarically murdered by souped up Ogoni youths on the suspicion that they were SELL-OUTS and after they were labelled vultures by Wiwa himself.
This report is just another piece of revisionist claptrap.
The only doubts I have is whether Wiwa himself actually ordered the Ogoni Youths to carry out the massacre and not who carried out the killings as that has never ever been in doubt

texazzpete:
Insider information.

You quoted specific statistics. Your source please? i'll understand if you'd rather not say, just answer the questions i posted earlier.
And please, lets keep this civil

texazzpete:
Source please?

blacksta:
Until a Niger Deltan takes a guns blows off the heads of the like Clark, Ibori, Udagdan, Odilil and many other corrupt leaders in the ND nobody will take them serious and they can continue to wallow in split crude oil

texazzpete:
MEND and their ilk were the cause of most of the Niger Delta pollution in recent years, yet you've been vocal in your support for them in the past (up until the advent of GEJ as presidential candidate).

Chrisbenogor:
Whoever set this up to make us think the North is responsible for the woes of the Niger delta must be laughing his buttocks off somewhere. The level of funding given to the Niger delta presently is enough to make the region a little heaven in Africa. Instead of facing the immediate problem we have there which is the lack of leadership we would rather blame someone else for our problems. All the governors of the Niger Delta are stinky and corrupt, they are a living punishment to the region and if anyone can convince me that it is the north that foisted the lights of Ibori, Igbenedion, victor attah, uduaghan and their thieving and conniving backsides into power in this region I might just listen.
For now the ND is the laughing stock of africa, instead of these silly bondage freedom fighters to take them out they are busy bombing inanimate objects like pipelines. MSCHEWWWWWWWWWW

We witnessed the slow poisoning of the waters of this country and the destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operations. But since the inception of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than twenty-five years ago, there has been no concerned and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil operators, to control environmental problems associated with the industry

-Greenpeace International (Shell Shocked)

Gas flares release a variety of potenially poisonous chemicals such as nitrogen dioxides, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds like benzene, toluene, xylene and hydrogen sulfide, as well as carcinogens like benzapyrene and dioxin. Often gas flares are often close to local communities, and lack adequate fencing or protection for villagers who may risk nearing the heat of the flare in order to carry out their daily activities. Flares which are often older and inefficient are rarely relocated away from villages, and are known to coat the land and communities in the area with soot and damage adjacent vegetation.

In November 2005 a judgment by, "the Federal High Court of Nigeria ordered that gas flaring must stop in a Niger Delta community as it violates guaranteed constitutional rights to life and dignity. In a case brought against the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (Shell), Justice C. V. Nwokorie ruled in Benin City that the damaging and wasteful practice of flaring cannot lawfully continue."

[size=14pt]The Come-Back Kid Versus the God-Backed Kid[/size]
. . .
My little interpretation is that the intention of that glowing rendition on Atiku by the Trust is to shore up support for its own, the 'anointed' candidate of the North. It was meant to subtly intimidate Jonathan, members of his camp and the entire country that given the much touted political astuteness of the North, the region had spoken and so the non-North part of the country should begin to catch cold. In other words, the battle line has been drawn between Atiku the candidate of the North and other Nigerians who are non-Northerners. With the way Atiku emerged, the way he was presented and the way he is being managed, the impression is created wittingly or unwittingly that he is a candidate of the North while Jonathan is a candidate of other Nigerians. That strategy, to my mind, will not deliver the PDP ticket to Atiku or the north at all.

The truth is can only the North make Atiku or anyone else a president without the support of other Nigerians? Northern feeling of triumphalism over the emergence of Atiku seems to create that feeling that the North thinks it can go it alone.

I think that Mahmud Jega, the media establishment in the North and other Northern political strategists do not know the harm they are doing to the Atiku candidacy by adopting him as their own. There is something truly odious about whipping ethnic, regional or religious sentiments in favour of any candidates or in promoting a personal or regional political cause. And this is the whole reason why some of us are opposed to zoning. Zoning is a dignified way of promoting ethnic politics. Perhaps what the northern political establishment led by Adamu Ciroma sought to achieve was not to polarise Nigeria along a sharp north-south divide but to get power to serve the interest of a clique. But what have they ended up with?

In the eyes of even ordinary Nigerians the contest for the presidential ticket of the PDP is between the candidate of zoning versus the candidate of merit, the candidate of the north versus the candidate of all Nigerians,, the candidate of progressive Nigerians versus the candidate of conservatism. This is what in essence the contest is going to be cast in. We cannot escape this kind of categorisation because of the way Atiku emerged and the way ordinary Nigerians are bound to see him and his candidacy. This is certainly unflattering and is not the way a man like Atiku who has spent his entire career trying to build bridges of understanding across the length and breadth of the country would like to be seen and assessed. Atiku does not need to blame anyone. He has got to blame himself for submitting himself to the northern consensus nonsense and eventually emerging through that process of ethnic selection.

Yes, we agree with Mahmud Jega and the Daily Trust that Atiku is a come-back kid. Jonathan does not claim any super human ability. He is a simple guy whose upward movement to national prominence has been entirely orchestrated by God. It will therefore be appropriate to describe the coming battle as one between Atiku the Comeback- Kid and Goodluck Jonathan the God-backed Kid. We have here a man who is acknowledged for his sagacity in fighting his battles. He will be squared up against a man who surrenders his battles to God to fight for him.

How will this kind of fixture play up? Will a northern candidate with powers to fight his wars beat a candidate who is a candidate of all Nigerians and whose amazing rise from nonentity to political prominence in less than twelve years shows that all along he is backed by God? We shall see.

Goodluck Jonathan may not have a powerful regional newspaper and a powerful regional political clique to back him but on one powerful being he can count on. That being is none other than God. All along, the mighty hand of God has steadily been guiding Goodluck Jonathan to rise from one humble position to the next bigger one. This hand of God, some of us trust, will guide Jonathan to thrash Atiku with all his political wizardry and the backing of a powerful regional bloc. Atiku the hope of the north will bow before Goodluck Jonathan the hope of all Nigerians. From his humble upbringing and the way he has so far carried himself, Jonathan is set to emerge as the torch-bearer of a new generation of Nigerian leaders that is freed of baggage like regional backing, clique backing and the backing of godfathers. His constituency is the whole of Nigerians and the people he will be called upon to serve are all Nigerians. That is the kind of man Nigeria needs urgently.

Some of us cannot wait to see which tendency will triumph in the coming few weeks. We are confident that the regional tendency represented by Atiku will fall to the superior tendency of pan-Nigerianism represented by Goodluck Jonathan.

Obiagu1:
OnlyTruth this may be a bit outside the present discuss, but I just want to say it

I've been with many SS folks, I know how they think. I schooled in their region, I know how they view us.
What I fear could happen to my people is being used by these folks that scorn us, I mean falling for GEJ's bullsh-t.

The earlier we take a stand and force them to rethink the better. Mark my words, if an Igbo runs for president and gets 30% of vote from the SS, then that person is Christ himself.

I will follow every step Ekwueme takes from now on on this issue because it has become apparent to me he really understands what's going on between us and the SS.

marcdunu:
While you are also laughing also remember to laugh about the current Aso Rock occupant who was caught pants down trying to offer a Pastor bribe for his political support.

egift:
@Beaf: Once its not your uncle "GEJ", you will not agree. We have had a lot of cases where GEJ committed blunder - you did not even believe it was - so nobody is taking you serious (next thing is for you to come up with insults).

@Post:
Atiku/(Ken Nnamani, Soludo or iweala okonjo) will be the best option for Ndigbo and Nigeria at large. Am glad all those Igbo criminals are not in the picture - Go Atiku!

snakova:
It appears you never read the whole article. Who is the government after? Not the same militants that kidnapped some expatriates some days back abi? IDIOTO

We have provided enough explanation on this matter but for reasons yet unknown to us to the U.S Senate and from all that we know, the issues that had earlier on been misunderstood have been cleared. The family doesn't have issues with issues with the US Senate or anyone in America concerning this or any other matter. But since this is a season of politics; dirty politics for that matter, there is no way we can stop people from have continued to whip up this old and baseless story for mischief.

For whatever reasons, the American authourities seem to have problem understanding that Atiku has his own money, which he transferred to the university and some of his interests in the US and other areas.

The U.S Congress did not charge Atiku or members of his family with any wrong doing. If these were the case, that would have led to indictment and criminal charge. We all know how the United States operates globally. America not only shares information with its partners all over the world, America can get an erring man or woman from any part of the world and subject them to criminal trial whether such persons are U.S. citizens or not.
The report has not established that Atiku made the money in question, or any money in his possession illegally or from sources of criminal origin.

Analysts are of the opinion that NASS should have done its homework first before engaging in the drama that led to the hot exchange between members of the Committee and the CBN Governor.

McKren:
You can believe whatever makes you feel good but IBB has said himself on TV that his current priority is to help Atiku win PDP primaries.