₦airaland Forum

shadeyinka:
I agree with you!
Gideon felt inadequate but God supplies grace for his purpose

As did Moses and Christ and Mohammed and just about every prophet we read about today. Even God, we read, had to say, "[url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1%3A26&version=NIV]Let us[/url]"!

Those who walk wisely never walk alone. Thy walk with an accompanying grace that acts like the [url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2013:18-21&version=NIV]Mustard Seed and the Yeast[/url].

shadeyinka:
Yes, each one who know what Nigeria should be should do their own part AND educate everyone by not pretending that all is well. They should applaud the government when they do right but also speakup when government does bad

Yes we should. We should also remind ourselves that we are the government. and therefore remove the twigs that blind us from our own eyes first so that we can more properly play our own parts in governing.

shadeyinka:
But it's the way life is everywhere!
Those who came to watch the crucifixion of Christ were much more than those who actually did the crucifixion. In the world, the mob always win.

I do not agree that those who "came to watch the crucifixion of Christ" won, and from what I know of you, neither do you! If those who "came to watch the crucifixion of Christ" won, Jesus would not, as some believe, be sitting at the right hand of God judging the living and the dead and giving some what we refer to as eternal life!

I therefore ask you to reconsider if it is "the way life is everywhere", and that "in the world, the mob always win". Is it not the truth that the light always shines in the darkness, and the darkness, weak as it is, can never overcome?

shadeyinka:
What do you think is more real to them? It is not the Virus but the Hunger!

Not to those who lose people because of one or the other. It is here that Socrates attitude to democracy comes in. Further reading of Plato, who put words into Socrates mouth, would show you that the educated must be wise and smart enough to stop mob rule. If we can't, it just shows that we are not as wise and smart as we think we are, and must work harder instead of giving up to the mob.

shadeyinka:
Who then will open the eyes of the blind?

You. Me. Every single Nigerian who takes responsibility and decides to do what the person quoted below suggested, though he would need to show more responsibility and read more instead of ignorantly responding without reading and understanding.

firo08:
work collectively to change Nigeria.

shadeyinka:
It's impossible for a single person to rule a nation. But a single person can set the ideology and path of a nation.

Like I said: At my level, I can do what I can by educating people about the nature of our problem and proposing solutions to such problems. I also do my best at MY sphere of influence.

I do NOT have the kind of money to do our kind of politics. I cannot sacrifice my conscience to serve a big politician until I have the power to compete according to their rule.

But I have the power to talk: I will do more of educating people and complaining of need be so that others who read can think. You never know, one of them might be born close to the corridors of power or born with some diamond spoon in their mouths.

I will not say it is well when I know it isn't. I wouldn't keep quiet when I should speak up.

If it isn't me (as the president of Nigeria) , then it is certainly ONE MAN! The person who has heard the message and has been given the opportunity

Please stop underestimating yourself! You are far more powerful than you think. You are afterall here, a single person, setting the ideology and path of a nation, and we are here reading the ideology and path that you are setting. Even when we disagree with you, you sow seeds. And while some of your seeds may seem to fall along the path for the birds to eat; and some may fall on rocky places with little soil and be scorched by the sun and wither and die and some among thorns which choke them; still some seeds of yours will fall on good soil and produce a crop a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Those who have ears (and eyes) that work properly will hear (and see).

shadeyinka:
With one phrase from you (in red) you have actually agreed that the problem isn't the electorates but the elite politician class.

If the politicians invest in educating the populace, the populace will have the light to see the kind of leaders that will lead them towards economic and political prosperity.

It wasn't the problem of religion. It was blindness caused by, disunity, inferiority complex and shortsightedness!

No shade, I have not "actually agreed that the problem isn't the electorates but the elite politician class". And if your desire is to cover your eyes to what I actually do say and see what you want to see then I would have to concede that your desire is to remain blind!

It benefits the rulers to keep us blind. It is only by keeping us blind that we would continue to be enslaved in their Garden of Eden that they have convinced us we are in. When we acquire knowledge, our eyes will be open and we would see how naked we are and learn the proper things to do to give us the results that we desire. But if we do not do what is right, the wages of our ignorance is crouching at our door with the desires to have us, as we ought to clearly see by the fact that we currently suffer!

It is our duty and responsibility to bear our crosses and rule over our blindness instead of relying on some non-extant messianic politician to rule over it for us. It is us who suffer if we do not.

shadeyinka:
You blame the blind for not seeing the light!
How could he have seen the light?

Isn't lack of education a form of blindness?

Yes, I do blame the blind for not seeing the light. And light is indeed education.

Why do we not see that we are blind? Do we not see nations that are doing much better than we are? Do we not ask ourselves why they do better than we do? Is it not true that if we do what is right, we too would progress, but if we do not do what is right, sin is crouching at our door desiring to have us? Or is it that you do not see our lack of progress as the wages of our sin, as in ignorance, that which is killing us?

Go check how much those nations you compared us to spend on education and compare it to what we spend then ask why we do not see the light that they seem to see.

shadeyinka:
Socrates say democracy is the worst form of government for an uneducated populace.

My opinion on Socrates opinion on democracy is written here.

Anyone who knows anything about Nigeria and our fight for democracy will not agree with him, and as the Awolowo era politicians emphasized, educating the electorate is the solution, and not the abandoning of democracy. Do tell though if you have a better way of choosing those who rule over us.

shadeyinka:
You can't blame the blind for not seeing the light. After the blind is healed, he would not be guilty again.

The blind are unfortunately responsible for their blindness, in this instance, and do deserve to be blamed. Listen to us being blamed even by you:

shadeyinka:
Our forefathers exchanged human beings for umbrellas and mirrors and guns. They could have exchanged this same humans for knowhow!

If we were not blind, our forefathers would have gone for that which is more valuable than "umbrellas and mirrors and guns", we can't after all claim those we got the "umbrellas and mirrors and guns" from did not have the "knowhow" we now pine for. But it is not to late to evolve, I say, if our desire is to become like them.

Dee60:
BAPTIST ACADEMY OLD STUDENTS HAVE BEEN TOLD THE RESULT OF THE TEST CONDUCTED. HE DID NOT DIE OF COVID-19. THE TEST CAME OUT NEGATIVE.

WE HOPE THAT PEOPLE WILL STOP SPREADING UNTRUTHS.

THE LORD COMFORT HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS AND FORMER SCHOOL MATES.

I don't know what he died of and only lament that he died.

shadeyinka:
The blame goes to the Nigerian politicians not any Martian. They are rich, they are educated, they are well traveled, they know how it is in the developed world
YET
They keep the electorates down in lack of education and poverty!
They amass riches to keep themselves in perpetual electoral power.

Get the leadership right, the followings will conform. The followers are sick (poverty of education and money) and you still expect them to take the blame of bad leadership? One man changed China by his foundations Chairman Mao! One man changed Malaysia Mohammed Mahathir. One man changed Singapore Lee Kuan Yew.

We will continue to talk, educate and do our part that the Father of Modern Nigeria will come out from amongst us in the future: armed with enough information to know how to lead and what to do as a progressive leader.

You show little knowledge of governance in thinking "One man changed" the nations you mentioned. Its the type of thinking one gets from reading headlines or getting one's reasoning from religion instead of studying history. If you studied history, and the books of religion, you'd know that despite the claim that "One man changed", many people were actually involved in making those nations ones you now envy, and even Jesus Christ stood on the shoulders of the giants who were before him and he needed disciples too.

In a democracy, the people are responsible for electing those who rule them. And when we become responsible like the nations you mention and envy, instead of our current irresponsible attitude of passing the buck or waiting for "one man", we too will become like those countries.

So, according to you, "Nigerians elect politicians with an average education level of primary 4", but it is not the fault of those who elect them? Trust me when I say, we never suffer reach, and the average level of the electorate itself must be much lower than primary 4. We are like blind people who elect the one eyed to rule over us and when we have two eyes we will see.

As to my linking it to religion, you can wish as much as you want. I would have loved to say, "our philosophy", but unfortunately that is very religiously influenced, and will not change till we start using our brains and actually understand that even our religion states that [url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3%3A19&version=NIV]By the sweat of our brow will we eat your food[/url], and we must [url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3%3A19&version=NIV]Be fruitful and increase in number[/url]; fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” and only then shall we be blessed, instead of our current waiting for blessings from heaven while we blame martians from the North like irresponsible people would.

shadeyinka:
I wish you didn't have to link it with religion BUT an inferiority complex. Africans have always seen the whites as demi-gods: and because of that assumed that they do not have the capacity to learn the knowledge of the white man. That's the difference between the Japanese or the Chinese and us. They are struggling to learn, copy, adapt what truely looks like the wonders of the white man. We are not making any such effort except to BUY the thing and start oppressing our neighbors with it.

Do you have an idea of the average educational grade of our electorates? The answer will shock you: primary 4 at the best. In other words, the question you should ask is:
Does the average electorate know what they want from their representatives?
The answer is NO!

Ask the average Nigerian what they want from the government. You'll hear things like "we want money to flow!". How? They don't care! They don't know the relationship between International Oil Price, Importations, Industrialization etc on the well being of everybody.

So, when choosing a president, they don't focus on what the duties of the president should be: the focus on his tribe, his religion, his wealth, and political age

The electorates problem is compounded with poverty. Nigeria is now the world's poverty capital thanks to our politicians. N3500 to them is more real than the "promises of the politicians" which by their EXPERIENCE is nothing!

Those who know where Nigeria aught to be and know what we aught to do are minorities. Your politicians know this and that is why in Nigeria, Party MANIFESTOS doesn't count a hoot. Electoral debate don't mean anything.

Should you still blame a blind man for his blindness? If education had been made Compulsory everywhere in Nigeria 40 years ago, probably we'll be saying a different thing now.

The average core northerner doesn't have a preference for any politician other than the one that his Emir says they should vote for.
Where then does intellectualism come in in the choice of a candidate?

You can blame the politicians: why!?
They have at least a minimum education and wealth to know what to do to heal this country and enough comfort to resist compromise!

sassysure:


We must defend Nigerian govt by all means

Really? Sounds irresponsible, to me.

Democracy might be one person one vote, but the responsible add their voices and opinions too, and the more responsible get off their asses and fight to get themselves or their representative elected so their own policies get implemented and not someone else's.

shadeyinka:
No! No!! No!!!
No one even in the developed countries love to pay tax. Everyone is trying to see how to pay minimum tax. It is the governments responsibility to make sure that personal income can be tracked and tax expected is computed and then sent as a bill to the taxpayer.

The Nigerian government has made things worse by making the average citizenry POOR and thus not even "tax worthy"! Your politicians know that it is impossible to tax a dieing drowning man. Because of politix, they made sure that National Identification Number and citizen data cannot work


No sir, it isn't the fault of the citizens who see the only benefit fro politicians as the N3500 incentive for voting during election time:this is what they've always known as the dividend of democracy.

As I said, you speak as if Martians are our government or as if our government comes from Mars. Is it not true that our very own lack of a desire to pay tax is what makes us elect a government that can't collect tax?

If we want things to work better in Nigeria, then perhaps we should become more responsible Nigerians instead of passing the buck to Martians.

payperpost:
you sef dey UK? na wah oo, you guys shouldnt kill us oo, please come back to so we can fix Nigeria please.

I'm in UK because I fell ill in Nigeria while trying to fix my village, Nigeria being far too big for my puny might.

Schistosomiasis (though some say it was village people), paralysed me from the waist down and almost killed me and the NHS put me back almost together again after village people killed all my investments in us.

shadeyinka:
How come Nigerians don't pay tax? Is it the fault of the electorates?

Yes, it is the fault of the electorate that we do not pay tax!

If we want to pay tax, we will elect those who would enforce its collection. But you tell me how we would react if someone said, "vote for me and I will make you pay tax", even if we are convinced that person would spend our tax judiciously.

shadeyinka:
If we are spending the monies judiciously, how come we have oil, we can't prospect for it, neither can we mine it, we can't even sell it without Shell, Mobil and the foreign oil companies.

Good question.

I'd say it's because we are incompetent and refuse to learn how for ourselves, and need these foreign gods (Shell, Mobil and the foreign oil companies) to come do it for us. I also think we get this attitude from our religions which teach us to look up to the heavens for manna to fall so we can eat instead of learning to make manna ourselves.

A lack of responsibility, is what it is. The same attitude that makes many heap blame on government as if it was people from Mars who elected them. Odd thing is it is we who suffer from our ineptitude, and we who refuse to learn and grow and evolve and develop, and not Martians.

Whether our money is spent judiciously or not is up to us, and I can only hope this is borne in mind at the next elections.

Amumaigwe:
Which country borrows to pay wages?

Almost every country borrows to pay wages. They have to while they await tax receipts at the end of the tax year and often they spend more that they receive. Its called deficit spending.

Amumaigwe:
Which country borrows to pay wages? If they can no longer fund their overbloated civil service and monster-sized political officers' wages, they should scale down their number or expedite action to restructure or outrightly dissolve this country. Nonsense.

No one asked that money be borrowed to pay wages, though, with oil selling for so cheap we may not have much choice, unfortunately.

As for that "overbloated civil service", when a former governor of my Osun State said the same and planned to reduce it, we stupidly refused to give him a second term and settled for half pay instead, which was paid every other month with no hope we'd be paid those they missed.

shadeyinka:
You have stayed too far from home that's probably why you can't see properly.

You should tell that to my village people and my bank account!

This sounds like a protest against the police collecting bribe, and not a protest over lockdown, and I do not blame them!

masterflowx:
Can you imagine?

How is he going to know that there still kind-hearted people like Anthony Agiliga in our society today?

Instead of him to emulate his action by giving to the less privilege, he's here castigating someone good deed.

And the funny thing is we don't even know if the op is the person giving. I can't help thinking he is hammering the nail that sticks out.

Ishilove:
This is very sparse fair...

Austerity na! Reduced pay during lockdown and lots of village people to consider.

payperpost:
wicked people everywhere, how can you post this here? you can not kill me, never!!

I'm a cat

Funny. There was a beggar outside the supermarket I bought the chicken from begging for coins. I don't normally feed beggars because a lot of them spend their money on drugs, but I thought how this lockdown has increased the cost of heroin and he might need it for food, but I had only 12p in coins. So, I gave him the 12p and a fiver. You may see, therefore, how I can post a picture of a £2.88 roasted chicken.

By the way, I stupidly forgot to turn the oven off till the next day which cost an extra pound in gas!

cococandy:
why couldn’t you?

Only ate half what was in plate in the end. Not doing much so burning little fuel, but always did eat little and infrequently.

Below is breaklunch. And I don't plan to eat all that butter!

Righteousness89:
Next time keep them to yourself bro! U don't need to put it out here!!

Yes he does need to put it out there, to inspire those who are not inspired!

He is definitely going to live long.

zionmde:
Its not easy to be so locked up for long and denied of the very things that makes us humans.

I dont blame them though

The Brits seem to be handling it well enough, as is South Africa.

Corporate2020:
They are following their President order. Dr Donald Trump already told them to drink insecticide to tread Corona Virus. I think it's time I start exporting Sniper Insecticide to USA.

I'd have loved to go into business with you, but more research would need be done to see how sniper competes with oxycontin.

shadeyinka:
Nigeria has been taking loans from the 80's till now mostly in the name of infrastructure and poverty alleviation? How much success have we made in the utilisation of the loans?

A lot! You should see how much progress we would have made without it!

shadeyinka:
If the present government take a loan, what do you think is the probability between 0-100% that the loan will be judiciously utilized.

I can't answer that and neither can you unless we want to make up crap in our heads.

shadeyinka:
How come with the massive amount of oil we have in Nigeria, we seem not to be able to weather through a few years of bad international oil market. What happened to all our savings? What did we do with all we have amassed in dollars over the years?

2 billion barrels a day is "massive"? I wonder what you'd call 10 billion barrels a day Russia and Saudi Arabia and even America, who are taking on billions of dollars more in loans than Nigeria can dream of incurring?

shadeyinka:
Buda, how come OBJ facilitated a debt forgiveness from our Big creditors but now, we are deep in debt again?

Guess you "don't know Nigeria far much more than you" claim, after all. If you did, you'd know that with the low revenue of Nigeria from exports and tax, Nigeria will always have to borrow money and be in debt, and moreso when the price of oil is as low as it currently is. And in fact, all countries have debts.

shadeyinka:
Our governments strategy seems to be that each government tries to borrow as much as the could so that the money can be shared amongst they and their friends and cronies: the posterity can borrow theirs when it's their turn.

This is the belief of many Nigerians, but it is based on the ignorant assumption that the lenders also don't care about their money too.

Perhaps learn about defaulting Argentina so you can be better informed. The state of Mississippi is still being punished for defaulting on $7 Million worth of bonds In 1841.

shadeyinka:
Are you sure our strategies for spending money has changed? If the strategies haven't changed, how can you guarantee a different outcome?

This is a good question, and the answer is, no, our strategy hasn't changed. But how could it, when the majority of the electorate think 2 million barrels of oil a day is massive, and don't know Nigeria is poor?

If we want a different outcome we will have to evolve our thinking and assumptions.

As to the rest of your diatribe, I wonder why you'd expect a country with a couple of decades of democracy to have developed democratic institutions similar to a country that's been at it for a couple of hundreds years.

Unfortunately, such thinking makes many feel they should be reaping what America reaps despite having not done what America has done to reap what it is reaping, and if those assumptions are not abandoned and our strategy changed, we will continue to reap whatever it is we currently reap, as little as it is, until we decide to evolve our thinking.

Kamani8:
America just shared equivalent of millions of naira to families in this pandemic. What did you get from nigeria?

Absolutely nothing, though some say they got some rice, but funny that you are "quick to use America as example".

Do you know how much America incurred in debt in order to "share equivalent of millions of naira to families in this pandemic"?

Go on, do the research, and let us know how much it is in Naira. Then let me know if you want to, or even can share, what America is sharing to families in this pandemic.

Baptist Academy Old Student's Association lament the loss of a very active member.

Olimpio, you will be missed.