₦airaland Forum

If you don't discipline your child, he or she has will not know what's right, and what's wrong. There are so many bad influence in societies outside of Nigeria, and you find many children who aren't disciplined by their parents, failing in school, joining gangs, doing drugs, etc. . . An occasional whoopin' puts a fear into your kids, that almost assures you they won't be open to the many bad influences plagued in the western society.

I don't recommend Mexico for any Black person. Mexico is one of the few countries in Latin-America that don't have a history of Black populations, and therefor the population is fairly ignorant towards Blacks, and they aren't shy about their racism either. Venture out of the tourist zone while Black, and you'll find yourself being harassed by the police, with them asking to sing the Mexican anthem in Spanish. Again, I suggest you look somewhere else.

grafikdon, you are behind this masterpiece?!? You should really consider going big with this, it's an amazing series, and cannot wait until the next installment! Excellent work my bruva

Thank you, it's beyond me how people can continuously misspell the name of a major ethnic group.

If I were him, I would have taken that $1,000,000,000 Dollars. You never know how the outcome of the trial would be, just to be safe, I'd take the Billion, so if I were to loose the trial, I'd still have more than enough money to take care of myself, donate, and support future generations of my family.

[size=15pt][center]In America, Nigerians’ education pursuit is above rest[/center][/size]

By LESLIE CASIMIR
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Nigerian immigrants have the highest levels of education in this city and the nation, surpassing whites and Asians, according to Census data bolstered by an analysis of 13 annual Houston-area surveys conducted by Rice University.

Although they make up a tiny portion of the U.S. population, a whopping 17 percent of all Nigerians in this country held master’s degrees while 4 percent had a doctorate, according to the 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, 37 percent had bachelor’s degrees.

To put those numbers in perspective, 8 percent of the white population in the U.S. had master’s degrees, according to the Census survey. And 1 percent held doctorates. About 19 percent of white residents had bachelor’s degrees. Asians come closer to the Nigerians with 12 percent holding master’s degrees and 3 percent having doctorates. …

Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University who conducts the annual Houston Area Survey, suspects the percentage of Nigerian immigrants with post-graduate degrees is higher than Census data shows.

Of all the Nigerian immigrants he reached in his random phone surveys 1994 through 2007 — 45 households total — Klineberg said 40 percent of the Nigerians said they had post-graduate degrees.

“These are higher levels of educational attainment than were found in any other … community,” Klineberg said.

There are more than 32,000 Nigerians in Houston, according to the latest Census data, a figure sociologists and Nigerian community leaders say is a gross undercount. They believe the number to be closer to 150,000.

There are plenty of worthy Nigerian-Americans, but when your countrymen have blanketed the world with faxes and emails for 15 years with accounts of embezzled funds just waiting to be smuggled out of Lagos, well, you do pay a price in credibility.

Consider that the Swiss made money off their reputation for honesty (if you put your money in a Swiss bank, they’ll let you have it back), while Nigerians have tried to make money off promoting the stereotype of Nigeria as so corrupt that there are piles of stolen money lying around ripe for the taking.

Skepticism aside, African immigrants to the U.S. are the cream of the crop, a big crop of 770 million people, much like Indian immigrants. A friend of mine from Cameroon came from a family in which eight of the nine children had earned advanced degrees from European or American universities. So, many of them are solid performers.

Also, as Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates have frequently complained, there’s a big demand from American universities for blacks for quota purposes, and so long as you look at least part African, the admissions committees don’t care whether your ancestors were slaves in America or whether your ancestors got rich selling slaves to the Europeans. Moreover, Africans tend to have less attitude than African Americans, so it’s all good from the point of view of colleges desperate for “diversity” but who don’t actually want to put up with African-Americans from the ‘hood.

VDARE Blog

bump!

So sad, thank the lord he spared another life. Hopefully the guy who did it is caught soon, especially with all the CCTV cameras they have around London, I'm confident he won't be able to run free for that long.

ROTFLMAO @ 419ja!!!!

On a serious note, I've noticed more people are paying attention to the fraudsters that originate from Nigeria, and nowadays you even here mainstream American comedians joking about themselves receiving 419's in their e-mail.

Thank you, but you are the one who is cute.

Right back at ya.

H2O2:
You sound like an ass kisser. I can't believe you can sit on your couch and spit such crap without even consulting your common sense before posting.

How does confidently seating on the couch translate into being a great president? Are we now serving up the presidency on an ikoko platter, or what? What next? Does the way he sits on the shitter in the toilet make him a great president too?


Obama's defense teams are out in full force tonight. The majority of you Obama lovers on nairaland amuse me. Most of you didn't even know who Sarah Palin was, but decided to call her a 'bitch' for joining forces with McCain. I'm sure if 70% of you are asked to serve up some convincing rationales for shining Obama's ass, all you can come up with is that "he's black and a great speaker. . . . oh, and he signs autographs with his wife" .


Politics indeed.

Frustrated much? Most of John McCain's strong points revolve around foreign policy. He's 72 years old, he's been there and done that. However, he represents nothing more than the failed foreign policies of the last decade and he hasn't said anything to prove otherwise.

Do you honestly think that (for example) Iran's president Ahmadinejad or Venezuela's Chavez give two bleeps about whether the United States talks to them or not? Of course they don't, they'll carry on doing whatever they do, regardless of whether we sit down and at least try to talk to them or not. At the end of the day, it's our national security (along with our allies) at risk, not theirs.

What Barack Obama lacks in foreign policy experience, he more than makes up for in his intelligence, ability to learn (fast) and ability to listen. I honestly feel that Obama would be far more well received by the international community and would be in a better position to rebuild damaged relationships with our allies, along with possibly reducing the number of enemies we have. On the other hand, John McCain doesn't inspire me with much confidence. He strikes me as someone who would refuse to talk to a foreign leader for the most trivial of matters (i.e. a minor disagreement). During the debates, he barely looked at Barack Obama and even referred to him as "that one".

My favorite quotes of the debate:

Well, you know, Sen. McCain, in the last debate and today, again, suggested that I don't understand. It's true. There are some things I don't understand.

I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.

That was Sen. McCain's judgment and it was the wrong judgment.

Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills -- for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that.

"America is the greatest force of good in the world". McCain really IS out of touch.

McCain can't even look at Obama still, another sign of the out of control anger this man has.

I'm surprised he hasn't soiled this thread with his out of context images yet.

[size=15pt][center]Nigerian Immigrants Not Your Average Cabbies[/center][/size]

Amy Jeffries
Published 08/01/2008 - 12:09 p.m. GMT

There is “nothing lower” than taxi driving in Nigeria, but in the United States it’s a springboard to greater things.

OAKLAND, Calif. – Sixteen years ago Dozie Ezeife drove a cab, now he drives a Mercedes, but not for a living.

For the first two and a half years after Ezeife immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area from Nigeria, he spent 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, behind the wheel of a taxi. In between the morning and evening rush hours, he would pull over by a station at the Bay Area’s subway system, put his feet up on the dashboard, and his nose in a law book.

Like actors who wait tables before getting a big break, many Nigerian immigrants in the Bay Area drive cabs on their way to earning the degrees and licenses they need for professional careers in law, medicine or business, according to community leaders.

The 2000 U.S. Census estimates there are more than 3,000 Nigerians in the Bay Area, though local Nigerians say the population is closer to 20,000. The government’s figures indicate that almost all Nigerians arrive with high school diplomas, and better than 60 percent have college degrees.

One long time cab driver, who has yet to reach his goal and asked not be identified, said that at any one time probably a quarter of Oakland’s cab drivers are from Nigeria. Ezeife, now 44, earned a law degree in Nigeria in 1985 and practiced for several years in Onitsha, a commercial center in Eastern Nigeria. He was able to pay his bills, but little more.

“That’s not what I went to school for, just to be living from day to day,” Ezeife said. “I was thinking just in terms of continuing to move up the social ladder, maybe get a bigger car, maybe build my own house, potentially get married some time.”

But in Nigeria, ambition and education failed to be enough to succeed.

“If you’re not well connected all that doesn’t necessarily translate to success,” Ezeife said. “I’ve always known that America is a place that if you really work hard you can make it.”

When Ezeife decided to head to the United States in 1990, he already had several friends living in Oakland.

His law school classmate, Donald Amamgbo, also 44, had moved to California a year earlier to intern at a law firm in Sacramento. He planned to complete an advanced degree in international law at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. Amamgbo found he could sit for the bar in California without another degree, but when his internship ended, he needed a job to pay his bills while he studied for the exam. The firm he had been interning for didn’t have the resources to put Amamgbo on the payroll, and his attempts to find legal work elsewhere failed.

“I don’t know if race was a factor, but I know definitely being from Nigeria was a factor, because all my education up to that point was based on the Nigerian legal system,” Amamgbo said.

“So I made that decision that I wasn’t gonna waste time trying to find a home in a law firm while I was trying to pass the bar. At that point my focus was, pay your rent, put some food on the table, and study like hell.”

A childhood friend suggested Amamgbo join him in Oakland where he could easily make $100 a day driving a cab.

“I did the math, 30 days means three grand. My dreams to sit for the bar was gonna come true.”

Ezeife, who had been languishing in Canada doing odd jobs for nine months, also quickly saw the advantages, but he never would have considered driving a cab in Nigeria.

“The kind of people who do commercial driving back home are people who didn’t go to school. Other than somebody who is farming or a domestic servant, there’s nothing lower than that. It’s that low,” Ezeife said.

But here in the United States, Eseife said, driving a cab was simply a means to an end. When the men both passed the bar exam in 1993, they went into practice together. While they built a clientele, both continued to drive cabs.

In 1995, the pair won their first case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals where they argued on behalf of a minority business owner who the U.S. Army had wrongly denied a contract.

The following year Eziefe bought his current home in El Sobrante, an upscale incorporated area of Contra Cost County, where the average value of a condominium is estimated at $439,000. He is married and has three children. Amamgbo has a wife, two daughters and a house in the Oakland Hills, a prestigious part of Oakland.

Future cabbies may not be as lucky

Not all Nigerians reach their goals so quickly.

The man who taught Eziefe and Amamgbo how to drive taxis has been behind the wheel for nearly 20 years. The cabbie, who asked to remain anonymous because of the social stigma associated with driving a cab, said he’s watched many come and go from the occupation over the years.

He attributed his long transition to becoming a registered nurse to personal circumstances.

When he arrived, making money was more important than going to school because he wanted to help his younger siblings through college, start a family and buy property in Nigeria.

Moreover, as time has gone on, driving a cab has become less lucrative.

“When I started it was much, much, better,” the cabdriver said. “Because then there was no bus to San Francisco Airport; there were no airport shuttles. So there were a lot of long fares, so you work less, and you make more money.”

Now he has to hustle for a full 12-hour shift to earn the same $100. That leaves little time for study.

“If you really want to read, then you’re not gonna make money,” he said.

He scaled back his driving when he returned to school and now drives three days a week to allow time for his studies. He expects to graduate from nursing school and cab driving in 2008.

Mshale

I agree with bawomolo. We need some sort of intervention (but with oversight) in Africa to combat the many out of control conflicts that are helping contribute to the demise of the African race. The governments can't control these conflicts, the so-called "African Union" can't control them, the only other outlet we have is too call in reinforcements from nations, who have more strategically trained armed forces.

ROTFLMFAO!!!

Whether you are a fan of Barack Obama or not, the United States NEEDS a major change in the White House. John McCain has had over a year to prove that he doesn't represent four more years of more of the same, but he and his campaign have failed miserably in that sense. Now the McCain campaign are at the last straw, launching attacks on Barack Obama's character, failing to realize that this is just making them look increasingly pathetic, clutching at straws.

Sarah Palin's addition to the ticket was either a feeble attempt to lure those who would have chosen Hillary Clinton, or John McCain was pressured to pick her by the far right of the Republican Party. If they chose Sarah Palin to try to win over Hillary's supporters, what were they thinking? The only thing Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have in common is that they're both female.

The best thing John McCain and his campaign could do would be to focus on the economy instead of trying to link Barack Obama to terrorists. If they do that and if John McCain does well in the next debate (town hall meeting format), they may not suffer a landslide defeat.

As for Sarah Palin, after the Repubicans lose, she needs to go back to Alaska and stay there. She's far too dangerous to be anywhere near Washington and she should stick to shooting Alaskan wildlife and her husband can re-join the Alaskan Independence Party.

Kobojunkie:
Oh Lordy!!! ROFLMAO!!!

Is this your catchphrase or something? I mean seriously, it seems like 80% of your responses consist of "ROTFLMAO!!!"

davidif:
Hey blackspade, this is politics and everything is fair game, remember karl rove in 2000 and 2004?


Of course, i would have prefered Mitt Romney or even Bobby Jindal but he went for Palin to appease the christian right and win more votes. It was basically a strategic decision.

This is politics, but this also is a time when America is in crisis, and all the Republicans want to talk about is unsubstantiated claims that Obama shares the same beliefs as William Ayers? I find it extremely ironic that they're saying these things, when BOTH Palin and McCain, were and are involved with ongoing scandals, not to mention Todd Palin being a secessionist!

The Republicans started a fight they should have known better not to start. Other than Sarah Palin's husband being a secessionist, she is also involved in multiple scandals, including TROOPERGATE. This woman wants to be VP, but is already battling corruption charges before she is even voted in?

McCain on the other hand has been involved in a famous scandal, the KEATING FIVE. This man was actually brought to court for this, not anything that was rumored, but something that held in court.

Like I said before, the Republicans are digging themselves into a hole, and the more dirt they sling, the deeper they'll be.

Mpele:
I don't understand how are Africans changing the landscape of cities in an around the world. I don't see how having a stall on a street corner in Harlem or working for Macdonalds in London can be seen as positive. What's happening to Africans especially in Europe, is that they're in places where the are not even wanted. That's why you'll here stories like "Africans killed in Ukraine"

It is highly moronic that an African would be made glad by the fact that he/she is contributing to the economy of New York whereas Lagos or Accra is turning into a rubbish bin. In the eyes of the British, White Americans etc, Africans will
forever remain as second class human beings.

Did you even read the article, or do you just take every chance to degrade anything that has the word "African" inside of it?

Promote "Nationalism" in all aspects of society.

OBVIOUS:
I agree. Chavez is definitely making a change in his country esp. for the poor folks. In fact, many middle class and upper class Venezulans don't like him because he has challenged the status quo. In fact, he has done for more for his people than Bush has done for folks in America. I must state that Chavez is also good at making allies and that helps him on an international level as well.

Thank you for understanding my perspective on socialism (not many people here do), and realizing all the benefits that could come out of it. I truly believe that socialism would and can be the moving force that will finally get Nigeria put onto the International stage.

Also, WELCOME TO NAIRALAND!

bawomolo:
abeg o, i no wan see hugo chavez or evo morales for naija. what naija needs are concious lawmakers regardless of ethnicity. nigerians are obsessed with power tussles rather than policy making.

Don't let the bad press get you confused about Hugo Chavez, and how he is running his country. This man is one good example of a hardcore socialist who is bringing equality to all his citizens. This man has brought millions of poor Venezuelans out of extreme poverty, and put them to work, while providing adequate education, and good health care. Unique from many other Latin-American leaders, he puts much attention on the social being of African-Venezuelans, and brought hundreds of thousands of jobs into their communities, which have been ignored for the most part of its history.

Socialism is a good system of government for developing nations. Almost all nations you see developing now, and on the road to being prosperous either have a socialist or communist government. ie. China, Venezuela, Angola, Russia, Brazil, etc. . . .

Although, some governments have failed using the socialist model of government ie. Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe (the current president of Zimbabwe), had the right intentions of serving his people, but he carried out his plans in the wrong ways, and his people are now paying for it.

To conclude, I still believe that if Nigeria were to elect a socialist who actually cares about the people, Nigeria would be better off in the long run, because a true socialist would eliminate extreme poverty, and bring equality amongst the people.

Oh cry me a river "Quote Syste". Get over your tribal obsessions and conspiracy theories, and face the truth. This article may not be entirely false, but you yourself are spewing out nonsense. I for one know corruption is widespread throughout our government, but I don't let it manifest into complete nonsense, and try to say the British are somehow controlling Nigeria from London.

What kind on crap is that? Do you have any proof besides conspiracy theories to support that claim of yours, or is your obsession making you spew out nonsense information from nowhere?

Please explain.

All I will say is that I cannot wait until the Yar'adua, and his cabinet are removed from our central government. Too many goals have been setback, and too many irresponsible decisions have been made under his government. Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, etc. . . I could care less what ethnicity, I just want Nigeria to have a good president who will put more of an emphasis on the people of Nigeria, and not big business. Some may think I'm crazy for saying this, but what Nigeria temporarily needs is a hardcore socialist who is willing to bring our people and our country up from the current state is in now.


Just my 2 cents.

[quote author=plus_Queen link=topic=179443.msg2898970#msg2898970 date=1223247841]If you like dance kokoma from the white house to the twin cities , there's still no place like home.
You are still in a foreign land!
and if you don't go home as a grown man or woman you'll get there in a wooden box in the cargo compartment of United Airlines or Air France.[/quote]I can somewhat agree with what your saying, but what is your opinion about the African refugees who have no other place to go? Our people (yes, I consider all Africans my people) are making strides in America, while at the same time sending over $3 Billion back home to relatives.

I myself am a student, and plan on living in America for at least six more years to achieve a doctrine degree in Architecture with an emphasis on Urban Planning. My dream is to return to Naijia, and establish my own Architecture firm there. I'm not going to deny I miss being home in Naija, but at the same time there are millions of opportunities to be made here in America, and the longer I stay, the more prepared I will be.

It amazes me really that the Feds are able to blow billions monthly in Iraq, spend so much on bailouts (including this mother of them all), and not raise taxes. In fact, both presidential candidates are still promising tax cuts in light of this major spending spree seen in recent weeks. This nation is now closer to financial ruin. They just print more dollars instead of actually creating them.

Even when taking the cost out of the picture, imagine if America used that $700 billion to actually help the people instead of the companies. This government does not know how to spend money correctly.

bawomolo:
lol no one is scared of the AU

I agree. They're one of the biggest jokes out of all the intergovernmental organizations in the world. They can't even put their foot down on the genocides that are frequently happening in Africa, not to mention they're trying to protect that criminal Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

I agree with many of the comments in here. We as Nigerians cannot blame the British for something that happened decades ago, for why Nigeria is in the state it is in now. Mismanagement and corruption in our political system is where the real blame needs to go, and the people who help elect these morons are just as responsible.

It gets tiring to see all this finger pointing going towards our old colonial master, who we have been independent from for almost 50 years now. If we were to say Nigeria is in the situation now because of colonialism, then what's the excuse for Singapore, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc. . ? Those countries have been independent for nearly the same amount of time we were, and they're all on the road to being considered "prosperous", with Singapore already having achieved that.

I'm sorry, but these type of stories don't help the development of a country, it just creates an un-needed "victim mentality" in our people. Time to move on folks, and catch up with the times.