₦airaland Forum

Like it or not subsidies have to go!! There is way too much corruption involved in whatever FGN subsidies to make it work. PHCN and NITEL are perfect examples. This idea of stopping corruption is only wishful thinking. Who will bell the cat? We are all corrupt to the lowest level. Deregulation is one way to reduce corruption quickly.

If removal of subsidy will kill the masses, how many masses own cars? Not up to 3million Nigerians own cars, out of 150mln!!

Subsidy will astronomically increase food stuffs - but most food transportation is done with trailers and 911 which use diesel (an already deregulated product) so how should it affect the prices astronomically?

Subsidy will seriously increase human transportation costs - ok, I agree it will increase it, but then do we all need to use one car to do school runs for one child? Why not team up with friends in your area? Must we all use one car each to work? Why not ride with others in your area? For those entering public transport, move around less!! Be more efficient with your money. We Nigerian's cannot pay the appropriate price for fuel, but we can travel all over the place for weddings, burial, parties, etc - even the poor masses!!



Even if all our petrol is refined locally, petrol will still likely cost more than N65, especially with a barrel at $120, maybe if a barrel is like $60, then unsubsidized, locally refined petrol might be cheaper than N65.

A generation has to take the heat of this subsidy thing and it will likely be ours.

I have always said that we have way, way too many agencies and parastatals. If they could all be listed, most well informed Nigerian's wouldn't even have heard of half of all the agencies and parastatals. Most of them add no value and just collect salaries. Just go to any federal secretariat building in your state capital and you'll see hundreds of people just milling around doing nothing.

Oya, make GEJ decree again na!! Se na by decree dem dey take run economy instead of sound economic policy,

Another hopeful story. Nigerian newspapers are constantly full of "Nigeria to build this", "Nigeria to do that, but nothing ever gets done. We seem to be cursed in this country, perpetually unable to bring projects to a conclusion.

Do we think at all in this country?? The cinemas we have are underutilised and we are thinking of building more!! Who is interested in bowling and rock climbing?? Our leaders lack the ability to reason or think logically. Because we see these things abroad doesnt mean we necessariliy nees them or can support them! Such things make sense abroad because of the large class of middle class who can afford them. Therefore, they stimulate economic activity. However, in PH, majority of the people are in the lower class other than Shell,Agip and Total staff and the other handful of bankers and oil servicing company staff who earn a good living. Even abroad where the middle class is huge, if you site a project like this in the wrong place, it will go up in smoke, yet we are siting this in Omagwa[/b], how many of the [b]FEW[i][/i] middle class we have in PH will bother to go there!!!

What the government should be interested in is programs/schemes that will help take the majority of the working population into the middle class. Once the middle class becomes more robust, things of this nature will even be done by the private sector. Afterall LASG did not need to build Silverbird or the Palms in Lagos. The market was there and the private sector moved in!!

RSG has not finished it's mall at GRA junction (which I even wonder if it can be a success, now that I cinema and Genesis centre have opened before it - maybe shoprite, KFC or Game can help to make it a success if they take up occupancy here) and yet, it's getting involved in another project in the middle of nowhere?

I tire o!!!

I don't think Rivers state needs it. Most of the projects listed are unnecessary i.e monorail and entertainment centre. The ring road just maybe makes more sense. The guy should get the basics right before going all grandois. The roads in PH (other than the ones he just dualised or is currently dualising) are pretty bad and the traffic issues are mostly caused by ineffective management of junctions and commercial operators. Besides even the roads that were recently dualised (transamadi oginigba and Old Aba road have developed a few small potholes that are not a problem yet, but if they are not quickly adressed will become a problem within the next year. The government has no structure or process to quickly identify such small potholes and quickly repair them before they become gaping pot holes, but we expect to manage a monorail? We have not proactively done all that can possibly be done to surmount the small issues. Instead our solution to our traffic isues is monorail. Besides, someone rised a point somewhere that the monorail was supposed to be a PPP, so why is govt putting so much money in it?

Also trying to build a new university from scratch makes no sense. There is nothing wrong with the current UST. It still has quite a lot of space within it that could be used to build some quality new buildings. All you need to do is to get a very good architect to remodel the existing plan for the university. If Govt spends 10% of what it intends to spend on the new university to upgrade the existing one, the students there will be happy and pray for him and then the remaining 90% could go to other things. Besides, what matters is not so much the buildings et al, but the quality within its walls - lecturers, equipment, structure etc.

Amaechi has good intentions, but I think the mount of money available to him is getting to his head and his good intentions are not properly thought through. The solution to most of our problems is not to throw multi billion naira projects at them, but rather to sit down, analyse the issues, identify the bottlenecks, profer solutions that are most effective, efficient and create the best value for money as well as impact the largest number of the society at once and then implement.

LG's should be scrapped in Nigeria. I don't recall in the last 10years of my existence in this country seeing ANY project done by an LG!!!!

It might just mean the Glo signal is very poor where you are. I had the same experience, my glo connection would break like 2-3 times a minute or sometimes every 2-3minutes. It made browsing very frustrating. Eventually, I unlocked it, put a MTN sim in it and found that MTN in my area hives me full bar 3G/WCDMA/HSDPA. The rest is history. With MTN, I can be connected for hours non stop without any disconnection.

N2.6bln for 1 year!!! Amazing!! How have MTN come by this valuation? Good luck to them!! For 10 years yes, but certainly not for 1year!!!

All na greed and lack of contentment. So many of our campus chicks are prostitutes these days, cos they are too eager to compete with dressing and BB. In order to make themselves feel good, it is now called "runs", but it's prostitution in another name. It is all over the place now. State university girls are particularly notorious for this.

stormm:
I'm sure you are aware that privatisation is not just concessioning, The main problem here is OGD used concessioning to perpetuate fraud. So get that and stop whinning rubbish. If the bolded are your opinion, then shouldn't the incumbent look into the issues and right all wrongs.

Is it proven that the concessions were used to perpetuate fraud or you believe that just because Amosun says so.!! I am not a supporter of one over the other, but OGD is innocent until proven guilty. I have learnt long ago that the press is often a tool used to malign people in this country. If 3 major newspapers say something negative about someone consistently for a few days, a few other newspapers will pick up on that story and before you know it, wrong stories are considered as fact. If you think about it, OGD's negative publicity started when he began to have serious problems with Obasanjo and the Alake of Egbaland, all of a suden OGD, who most people feel performed well in first term is now super corrupt!! There is always more to these things than meets the eye. Who know's, it's probably because OGD didn't support Obasanjo's 3rd term bid.

I believe Amosun is playing more of a political game than anything else. If he's looking for more funds, he can start by reducing the size and cost of his government, reduce wasteful spending and improve revenue collection.

There is nothing wrong with concessioning Olumo rock. What has the government done with it all these years. Did the money from it ever reach govt in those years? I am not saying the terms in all these OGD deals are correct, but then the value of something is the price people are willing to pay for it. If you like, value NITEL at $2bln, but if the all the bids revolve around $600mln, then $600mln is the value. Simple.

I think Amosun is talking too much. I have been to Gateway hotel Abeokuta around 15years ago and it was an embarrassment then, so where is he getting grandoise valuations from. There is nothing wrong with privatising these things. If Amosun thinks he can actually run all these companies he will discover that the cost of running them exceeds the revenue they bring in.

She's pretty, but not in a miss world way,

I'd love to go on a cruise one of these days. Not necessarily this ship though, cos it'll be quite expensive. I'm sure there are cruises one can go for at a quarter of the price of this one.

Is there ANYTHING in Nigeria that is inspiring

It's not impossible, but I just doubt it. In Africa, we use way too much block, cement and concrete! Lots of American houses are made from 70% wood. I have seen documentaries on Discovery channel of low cost 2 bed (or was it 1 bed) housing in Soweto with toilet and shower and kitchen that were being put up in 2 weeks or so.

Asides from the main support pillars, why must all the internal walls be partitioned with blocks? Why not some sort of cheap, but durable material. There are materials that are as light as cardboard that can take more stress than blocks. Saw a documentary of a material that it so strong, it can stop a bullet and yet you can sew it into a suit and wear it. In the documentary, it was speculated that Obama wore a suit from that material on his inauguration day.

The technology out there is amazing, but being Nigeria, we don't look into such stuff. By now our universities should be researching ways to build lower cost houses with lighter, more durable materials and developing a process f road construction that will be more suited for our hot,wet,humid climate! But instead our civil engineering professors are teaching based on notes of the 1970's, so what do we expect??

By the way what do you guys think? It seems that generally, the set of Governors from 2007-2011 performed better than 1999-2007.

Amaechi is like 100 times better than Odili
Daniel was better than Osoba (at least in OGD's first term)
Fashola is better than Tinubu
Oshiomole is far better than Lucky Igbinedion
Chime is better than Nnamani
Akpabio also seems to be doing more than his predecessor

Chime, Amaechi and Goje should be on this list. I have heard from many sources that Chime and Goje have done pretty well. I stay in PH and I KNOW that Amaechi has done well

I hope that his massive church in Lekki has enough parking space?? Not the one that they end up parking along all adjoining streets and causing a nuisance to everyone. It's pity we have no functioning town planning authorities. Church buildings in residential areas, with no control is a definate no, no!! You never see catholic, anglican churches without large grounds that can be used for parking. The government should stop the use of converted residential plots and buildings for churches.

Such a ministery is unnecessary!!!

Not to sound pessimistic, but going by government antecedent across Nigeria, it remains to be seen if it will likely be built. It's more likely than not that this project will never see the light of day. Having said that coal still produces about 51% of WORLD electricty!!!!!

Yeah, I think student hostels can be profitable. I have considered the idea in the past, but never put the plan into action.

Accomodation on campus is a big issue. Many new universities, especially the state ones take off without hostel accomodation to reduce cost of initial start up, so many students stay in pretty poor rooms the villagers build, scattered everywhere and often requiring students to pass bush paths etc. i.e nothing very structured. OSU/OOU is a case in point, cos that's my alma mata.

This is another case of a knee jerk reaction by the Nigerian government. I have never seen a government as diconnected from its people as the Nigerian government!!! Once the enter Abuja, they totally forget whats going on every where else!!!

I think I'd give it to Abdulsalam. If the man had decided to hold on to power, he would have done so and nothing would have changed.

greedy and incompetent leaders.

When will NTA learn how to cover matches properly like Super Sport did yesterday!!? The picture was clear, the camera angles were very good, slow motion was available, the touch line interviews were well carried out etc. There was a super eagles match NTA covered a few months ago and I was thoroughly embarrassed for Nigeria. Often times the camera lost sight of the ball, the angles were horrible, the picture was very poor etc. I thought they said the bought/refurbished NTA's equipment to High Definition for the U-17 world cup!!??

This is one of the problems we have in Nigeria. We love to tell ourselves lies and believe it is the truth. NTA is supposed to be the "biggest network in Africa" and we still believe that aftyer 20 years of stagnation. Same way we call ourselves "Giant of Africa", when that title obviously belong to SA.

The minister of Information should immediately address the lapses with NTA.

Its amazing how little information government websites provide. Not to talk of how poorly designed they are. I visited NTA's website a few months back for the first time in my life and I was surprised to see that they had news older than 2 months still on the site.

Personally, I think all these announcements of free education and healthcare are more political than well thought out. I won't be surprised if 6 months into the free education thing, we start to hear that the state cannot pay minimum wage or is owing salaries. if that happens, then what is the point of free this and free that?

It's not as though free education is really impossible, but I just worry whether the scheme has been well thought through and whether the states finances can support it.

If we really have a cost consious govt, those cars can still be retained for another 2 years for the committees. Those of us who are fortunate to work and have pool/departmental cars have been using them for 5 years in some cases. And besides the roads in Abuja are good and i would expect they are properly maintained. So why must they be sold.

It should be scrapped. What does it do that the FEC cannot do? if GEJ needs advice from any past leader (perhaps on the circumstances of Nigeria supporting the ECOMOG initiative etc), then he should simply call the relevant past leader to Abuja for discussions.

As an aside, we also have too many agencies and commissions that are just paying salaries and adding no value to the common man. many of these should be scrapped too.