₦airaland Forum

What is Joagbaje talking about here? This is not about Eddie Long's personal salvation. He is already forgiven (if he has confessed) and still going to heaven. But you have to step down from your post. You cannot allow your indecency to tarnish the christian message you are trying to project not just to the world, but also to teenagers (who he likely molested). If it is OK for Eddie Long to remain pastor, then it is ok for  a pastor to commit adultery every now and then, ask for forgiveness, and remain pastor.

High_Chief:
Why would you trust someone again, especially when they have given you reasons not to. Ndigbo tried joining forces with the SW in the past but your leaders betrayed us badly and chosed to work with Nigeria, now you are reaping exactly what you sowed

I think the civil war is a convenient excuse. This schism has always been there, right from independence before any civil war or coup. IMO, the SE political aspirations have been the same from the get-go, ie independence - a disproportional share of federal power.

hercules07:
Our brothers from the East on Nairaland (not in real life sha) have such a deep seated hatred for the SW it is uncanny, any little thing that happens to the SW becomes an opportunity to gloat, why dont they put all of their efforts on making their villages, towns, cities and states much better places to live, the people of the SW have chosen the ACN as our leaders and we are comfortable with their decisions so far, we have tasted mainstream politics and we say no more. Ki o ni kaluku je oruko baba e abi na by force, afterall ile la ti n ko esho rode.

I'm not so sure its just a Nairaland phenomenon. If you look at the political moves of the SW in the last 20 years, not only have we been unable to forge any meaningful political alliance with the SE, we have been sabotaged by the SE even when it was against their own interests to do so. You don't even have to go back to the Abiola-Abacha-Ojukwu saga. Look at the last election. Any attempt at alliance by the SW was immediately rebuffed, even by so-called SE progressives.

ACN interests and SW  interests are not the same. They may converge here and there, but for the love of God guys, stop using the terms interchangeably. Tinubu is a politician, not a statesman. We do well to always keep this in mind.

senbonzakura_kageyoshi:
yeah, i get that a lot

really? I would never have guessed that.

LOL! @blindcopy. Nuclear reactor ke? Well, I'm sure the OP is smart enough to make his/her own decision from all the opinions on this thread. Whatever you choose, best of luck to you. Determination is key.

ekt_bear:
Bah

C sucks bro

You spend too much time focusing on things that don't matter. Memory management in this day and age?  Is that really what someone should be focusing on? I'd rather have someone master unit testing, design patterns, object oriented programming, concepts like that.

Lol. People have been saying this for decades, and it still isnt true. If you plan on writing mid-sized to large code bases for corporations and you are competing with other developers, you will worry about it. Ask any IT guy about budget allocatios for equpmet such as servers, memory and storage. You are always under-budgeted. Always.

C and C++ code is buggier imo. And the errors are more subtle and harder to catch.

ITs easy to shoot yourself inthe foot with C no doubt. But its much better to learn not to shoot yourself in the foot, than just switch to an "easier" language. Easier in quote, because as the complexity of your code grows, you will eventually run into trouble if you dont have a C background.

Also, kindly explain what bad habits one learns from a WELL DESIGNED scripting language like Python or Ruby (I'm not talking about a junk languages like PHP here).
And in what way is Python less powerful for most applications?

These are named scripting languages for a reason. They are meant to be like shell scripts. You sacrifice performance for a good API that lets you do powerful things quickly. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Scripting languages have been used by experts since sed, awk, ,  BUT, they cannot be your basis for learning programming. Why? The API acts as an opaque barrier, preventing you from seeing what is going on under the hood. Try writing a high-impact database app or graphics app with Python and watch your company go under.

I'm not a fan of C at all for  99% of software that one writes.

No worries, every one has their preference.

Now, if I have to write a compiler, operating system, things of that sort, sure, then use C. But for most software that beginners are likely to write (text processing, some GUI stuff, SQL database stuff), makes way more sense to use a scripting language, imo.

A few years back, PHP was all the rage in web programming. Sweet APIs meant you could do all sorts of great stuff and not worry about whats under the hood. Or so people thought. Until code complexity went up, hosting bandwidth cost went up as more people started using the web, and hosts started metering intensive CPU applications (if your app is using too many CPU cycles, it gets metered wether you know it or not. Your users will sometimes see a sluggish or no response from your site). A good number of websites couldn't handle load, and they had to switch to well designed packages like Joomla and Drupal (my favorite). Guuess what the developers of the packages had. A good low-level background of how programs run on computers.


In short, You need C. Always. In a competitive business environment, memory, processing power and storage will never be cheap. If you want to be a world-class programmer, there is no shortcut. Hopefully my post doesn't sound condescending in any way,

Always start with C. Always. After mastering C, I've never had any other language take me more than a week to master (if you can name it, I've programmed in it). You could relax the rules and learn Java at the same time. But if you want to write world class code (no memory leaks, security holes etc, ) you have to start with the fundamentals. You also definitely DO NOT want to start with a scripting language. You pick up really bad habits and will shoot yourself in the foot when you move to more powerful languages.

The inflation is a result of the massive government spending to keep things humming. Trust me, its under control, by the way if we are depending on jobs the chinese wont need anymore, we are indeed fcked

Calculia:
I think Ezeuche is ban, because we have not yet heard from him in sometime. Nairaland is trying to destroy their business.

Or maybe he finally has a real job

that was brutal

2buff:
And just like that, in one fell swoop, he has aided the devil in the "falling away" of the brethren and the cheapening of the true testimony of the elect.

stfu and get laid. smh.

Shuo! I'm still here, I hear some people are missing already. Time to run for the hills.

McCoy91:
And this girl I've been eye-ing will be legal on the 24th. Chai! What is a guy to do?

Do what you need to do today, repent tomorrow in preparation for 21st

sholly_boy:
i gotta win about 3souls before saturday, NL you all should confess your sins and give your life to christ, do that now before friday night cos,he go be gbo gbo aiye before saturday 21st which is my b day.

May 21 na you bday now. Dont worry, you are already one of the chosen 144, 000. Just remember me in thine kingdom.

Lord have mercy indeed. Chei!

btw, anyone else think these videos look made-up? Allowing a video camera to capture rigging? hmmm,

I supported Buhari. However, the evidence above is meaningless. You need to show significant systematic voting irregularities, enough to tip the elections. 3 or 4 wards in a state Jonathan did not even win is useless. Either come up with compelling proof or get with the program.

ekt_bear:
In my opinion, this attitude is wayyy too pessimistic. If this inefficient subsidy is the preferred way for Nigeria to spend $4.2 billion/year, then Nigeria is probably doomed.

There is good reason to be pessimistic. GEJ has already taken a few steps in IBB's direction policy wise. Subsidy removal is really SAP again in new clothes. Implementing a change, without addressing the reason for the previous status quo is a recipe for disaster. It ends up killing local industries (I've given several examples in this thread). Perhaps even worse, it breathes new life into corruption. Things become so hard that we return to a winner take all type of politics. Get into office hungry, eat, eat, eat until the next coup.

I for the life of me cant understand why anyone would follow IMF's advice. Even their host countries throw their advice away. God help us

Kobojunkie:
I am sorry, but what you have above is not common sense but you trying to spin something out of nothing.

Again, much of the non-oil producing countries apply subsidies to HELP reduce cost for their own people, even as they already pay so much more than we do in Nigeria today. Claiming that that affects us is trying to weave some disconnected web there.

Lets simplify this: A company in Ekiti makes Adire attire and sells to different parts of the country. Factoring in transportation costs, she sells at N1000 a yard and makes N200 profit. A Chinese company does the same thing, except that his cost of transportation from China is being subsizided by his government, so he sells the same yard for N500 and makes N200 profit too. Who wins in the long run?

Hopefully this is connected enough for you. You can of course replace adire with plastic, cement, etc,

By the way, debo, I'm still waiting for you to come up with one top 20 GDP country that doesnt have substantial subsidies.

debosky:
You cannot demonstrate how lower petrol prices results in revenue growth in Nigeria - rather it is a waste of scarce resources. Petroleum subsidies are a 'social' subsidy in most cases, to keep the populace happy and not to drive economic growth.

For a country with dire infrastructure and  urgent investment needs, it is foolish to spend so much on subsidy.

Like Katsumoto alluded to earlier, policy and its implementation are two different things. Bad implementation of a good policy falls short of the mark. Bad policy has no hope of hitting the mark, ever. I challenge you to name ONE country with a top 20 GDP that does not have significant subsidies. Just name one. My point? Subsidy is good policy always. Do as the Americans and Europeans do, not as they say

Kobojunkie:
Nigeria is Not EVEN exposed to much of that. Here the issue is the cost of fuel. Most non-oil companies pay more than nigerians do at this point for the good. I don't think whatever subsidies the countries you mention have to save their people money in their own country impacts Nigeria's decision here.

Let's not turn this into another lame we-are-always-victims situation, and realize we have a problem that needs to be solved and no one is to blame for this but us.

Um, yes we are very much exposed to world trade. Not only is oil being used as petrol, but it shows up in pretty much in every product you can imagine, and the bottom line of every company. Don't forget that even companies in Nigeria that aren't exporting anything are battling foreign companies on local soil. To take a mundane example: If China is subsidizing its plastic toothpick maker, the company can come to Nigeria, sell at a loss in order to kill local companies competing without subsidy, and then carry all its profits away from Nigeria.

This isn't about being a victim. This is what Fela calls "belle sense", simple common-sensical knowledge about a country's welfare. The kind you don't need a PhD to grasp.

debosky:
Giving everyone some cash to buy petrol to run generators might give temporary relief, but when that money runs out, they need to spend their own money to buy petrol. Instead, pooling that money and building a power station will result in lower cost electricity, over a longer period of time.

This is a red herring. Subsidy for petrol has nothing to with building a power station. Both are necessary. The subsidy is not cash being doled out: If petrol were too expensive for people to buy, you wouldn't make that "lost" revenue anyway, and would not be able to build a power station. If on the other hand your subsidy encourages people to start businesses, ultimately your revenue grows, much more than you could have made initially and you can build 10 power stations instead of one.

Kobojunkie:
I strongly disagree! Trying to link the subsidies in Nigeria to those in order countries makes little sense considering our situation is not same, or even similar, with that of many of the countries to have in mind there.

If two companies in two different countries are competing on the world market, selling the same goods, and one company receives subsidy from its parent country while the other doesn't, who comes out ahead in the long run?

debosky:
The issue (I guess) is that many feel the subsidy funds would NOT be used to develop the economy so why not spend it on subsidy. This is a bit of a lazy argument - should we continue to encourage inefficiencies in allocation of resources?

Subsidies are not an inefficiency in themselves. They are tools used by all developed countries. Unfortunately, when we take IMF loans, one of the stipulations is no subsidy, so we are at an immediate disadvantage on the world market. Such advice has rendered carribean countries impotent.

Developing countries around the world are reducing subsidies - from Malaysia and Indonesia to oil producers like Bolivia. We need to get our acts together.

No, they are not.They are simply shifting them with accounting tricks, trying to abide by trade agreements while essentially cheating. Witness the number of cases at the WTO and other fledgling trade organizations.

Take a look at Nigeria pre and post SAP. Even accounting for corruption, you can see what damage this could do. Most states in the Federation not named Lagos still have not recoveredfrom the last structural "adjustment". More than getting our acts together, we need to worry about ourselves first.

Kobojunkie:
I agree that it is not a problem NOW, and that bad decision making on the part of our goverment officials remains the main issue. However, I will say that in the long run, we need to also address this need for subsidy as I believe it plays a part in keeping us where we are today. I don't think we can continue this way for too much longer.

We cannot say that because such countries like the US, etc subsidize some part of their economy, we should continue with subsidies without thinking instead of creating more efficient and effective ways around our problems.

The only way to effectively remove subsidies is if trading partners also do so in tandem. Unfortunately we have no trade agreements to do so or the power to even enforce it, so I think these subsidies will (should) be here for the long haul. On the other hand, subsidy is not really a dirty word, as long as it is commonsensical. For example, the small business loan program is essentially a subsidy, and it really is the backbone of jobs in the States