Nigeria's problem is not corruption, corruption is a symptom. The constitution has more power over us than I you know, the document is impractical and flawed in its very foundation and fails to properly define many things, with the acceptance of the 1999 constitution into law we were guaranteed to be were we are today.

Nigeria has two root problems, both caused by the constitution.

1: Revenue allocation system: The system of putting all our monies in the national account and sharing it completely makes doing bases at the state level impossible, this is state communism and communism doesn't work, if every state is entitled to what they make then they can succeed but not under the current system. let me explain further, if the federal government takes 50% of the money(i know they take even more) and share the other 50 across the rest of the states each states has control over 1/36 x 50% of monies, that is 1.38%. Each state governor on average is in control of 1.4% of his states financial destiny. It cannot be said that the governor is in control and the other people who have over 90% of the control are not interested, developing our states will never happen and the states are 99.23% of the country, that is more or less everything so power over our states is given to people whom are constitutionally guaranteed to not care about them, how can we develop.

2: Poor implementation of federalism, basically the regional governments depend too much on the central government and cannot do their jobs effectively, this in connection with the first is why public infrastructure goes to waste, because the states cannot afford to maintain them. Since the states are heavily dependent on the centre they mostly lose the ability to govern and the entire federal government is undermined.

So you see, the system in itself does not work and things like corruption begin to set in, if we but redo our constitution from the ground up we will in one move eradicate 70-80 % of Nigeria's problems. The nation should be ruled by the states and not the central government.

Just like Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Argentina etc so many paradise countries ruled by white people. I don't think this is an appropriate question under any circumstances and even if it is you really should read more on somethings before even asking stuff like this.

Rossikk:

I'm sorry but that's a load of utter balderdash. The US govt was heavily involved in various sectors of its economy at development stages, and was largely responsible for the railroads and other key infrastructure that enabled the US economy ascend in the last century. The Nigerian govt is partnering with the private sector to develop a shipyard. It is not doing so on its own with public funds. Why is that a problem for you? How does that prevent the govt from providing an ''enabling environment for millions'' to start their businesses? Even as we speak we have various micro credit schemes in place, various financial schemes being developed to extend credit to low wage earners and informal workers. Have you gone out there to investigate any of these developments? You simply assume nothing is happening, except the building of shipyard, because that was what you saw posted on NL. Fact is govt involvement is very much needed in the establishment of heavy industries like shipyards. We cannot simply allow foreign entrants to establish and control such key facilities 100% which is what would happen if govt took a hands off policy. Some govt involvement is required in terms of ownership for the nation to receive its due benefits from such heavy investments. not to mention national security reasons.

Of course the government was involved at every step, they made it so the people could achieve those goals but make no mistake about it it was the people who achieved the goals.

See, I do not doubt that Jonathan is trying but there is a much faster, more efficient and more effective way to turn Nigeria around and this is what I have been trying to say. The shipyard in and of itself is a good thing but it is not the best thing, not for the presidency, not by a long shot. Goodluck Jonathan is a good president even if only in intention and effort but there is so much more room for improvement, we shouldn't be content with what we have become there has always been much worse.

Let us get one thing straight, the dependency of the states on the federal government is because the federal government takes all their money away then gives some of it back to them, if you keep taking all the money I make and giving me only a little back of course I am probably going to be poor and at your mercy. The states themselves are not the problem, it is the relationship they have with the federal government that is the problem. The state governments don't have enough power hence they create things like governors forum to try and pool in what little influence they have, the failure of our states is the fault of the federal government so rather than abolishing them we should give them more power(autonomy).

9jadelta: ecnonomy forum or celebrity forum ?

I was wondering the same thing.

Rossikk:

You cannot sustain ''electricity, roads, security'' in the absence of a robust economic environment featuring mass employment opportunities and expanded business activity. You can tackle infrastructural challenges at the same time as you are developing your industries. It doesn't have to be one before or after the other. Private sector involvement in the project also multiplies its chances of long-term viability, while limiting direct govt expenditure in the effort.

The problem with you people is that anything that appears to give you an inch is welcome, if you want to go the whole 10 yards you need to skip a few of the inches and try to do things that give you more bang for your buck. That is to say that just like communism this sounds like a good idea but in practice we are not making any real headway.

There are 170 million people in Nigeria, do you think that building a shipyard that will employ maybe 5 to 10 thousand people aids them better than creating an enabling business environment for tens of millions of people to start their own businesses and employ even more. Is the president going to build all our offices and factories for us, do you think that when the history channel is airing "the men who built america" they show american presidents? The men who build america are people like Rockefeller and Ford. Then there is all that talking about national cake, we don't need the president to feed us, we need him to enable us to feed ourselves and that is the only way it works, that robust economy you speak of, it is built by working men and not presidents.

phantom: Okay crowe forgive me but you said 'our president opens other avenues for spending resources'.what resources.please clarify. thanks

Time, human resources, money. I was simply elaborating here, the resources consumed are not the problem or the reason behind my disapproval of GEJ, it is the clear lack of dedication to projects that are already running.

See, the first time I said "I'd pay more attention to what I am already doing". you said that was vague so I expanded on it a little but that in a nutshell was the point I was making, instead of reading it all properly you ignored that altogether and started talking about spending resources simply because I used the word, it makes it difficult to have a decent argument if I cannot expect that you will bother to read what I am saying. Please, leave the words I use alone, try to understand what they mean in this context, thank you.

phantom: lol....If you think 'spending' is the problem, then you dont know jack about the the power problem in this country.

That doesn't mean anything. "spending" in itself cannot be a problem, it is just a word. Don't respond with sh1t that doesn't make any sense. I made it very clear that the presidents lack of focus and follow through on projects that he has already started is the problem and you respond by talking about spending, spending what. You just picked any word you liked from my statement and wrote jargon with it, seriously.

Policewoman: Anybody saying this is a misplaced priority na him or her sabi. GEJ may be slow but I will commend him when he needs to be commended and criticism when I see him do wrong. Some chronic oppositionists (sic) here will NEVER see anything right in this regime as long as their opposition party is not in power.

Nigeria is a federal republic with 37 people appointed to govern the nation, that is 4.6m people per governing body on average, we are moving at an unreasonably slow pace for those figures.

phantom: what does this mean? How do you know the man is not paying attention to it or do you expect to see him sleeping at the power plants? Please define 'pay more attention to it' .its very vague.

Every few months the deadline for electricity generation reaching adequate values is pushed back, either the effort is not enough or the time spent on those efforts is not enough, in either case the solution is to dedicate more of whatever is lacking to electricity instead our president turns around and opens another avenue for spending resources so what I would do differently is to not open other avenues but instead spend time on the projects I already have running, is that better?

phantom: too much grammar.you r trying to round intelligent but seriously doing a bad job of it.how would you tackle electricity if you were president?

Your asking what I'd do differently, I'd pay more attention to it, that's what I'd do.

dayokanu: I would be interested in an analysis of the different region n the South and not just lump everyone together as SOUTH

Lemme guess, you feel you are from a particularly distinguished part of the south and want to hear the article call out your praises more directly?

2Legit2Qui: When Fashola screamed he is thinking of building a car plant in Lagos State, these same labradors shouted eureka, the deliverer has come. Now see what they are saying on this thread.

Blatant favouritism of Fashola by some parties does not make what GEJ is doing a good way to go about it, this is not about you, Fashola, apc vs pdp or what have you, this is about Nigeria and we are going to be fixing our country for decades to come if we do not work faster. We are supposed to be running a federal system of government so we should be growing much faster than we are right now.

Nobody or at least I certainly am not saying Jonathan's intentions are good but his methods are not, the idea that he can fix Nigeria all alone is absurd, that is why we became federal, all these projects no matter how amazing they may seem will not penetrate the surface, we need a lot more going on in Nigeria at all levels to fix this country, most especially at the state levels, you all fail to realize but the states cover a bit over 99% of the country, the enabling of governors to do their jobs should be Jonathan's priority, it is much easier, much more effective and much more efficient for 37 people to do the work the man is trying to do alone. Many things need to be sorted out before Nigeria can support the big things otherwise his efforts are wasted.

And before someone comes out to say that nobody is stopping the governors from doing their job, the federal government is stopping them, under the accusation that the state governors will abuse power (because they are Nigerian men, maybe the federal government is not made up of Nigerians?) the governors are strangled and denied the ability to do anything, federal government takes all the money from the country and gives the states peanuts to do 99% of the work in the country as ift it will be enough while rejecting states like Lagos the right to build their own power plants, the governors are powerless to effect change in the country leaving all the work to Jonathan, he can build all the shipyards he wants, those things are very specific and will not affect the vast majority of Nigerians.

common sense dictates we use the most efficient way to develop our country,that is to do things that affect as many Nigerians positively as much as possible before we start to worry about these things. Electricity was going to be non stop by mid this year then end of then end of the year now it is 2014, clearly those things are not going according to plan, he needs to suspend his hundred projects and worry about electricity and agriculture. Nobody is asking him to turn Nigeria into America in 4 years, these projects sound good but long term he is going about it wrong, we don't need him to be superman.

Jonathan means well but meaning well is not enough to make you a ruler, I would certainly like to now his position on state and local government autonomy, devolution of powers, the structure of the government of our federal republic etc.

GEJ and his lowsy attention span, always jumping from project to project when others are not even ready, this topic should really be "JONATHAN PLANS SHIPWRECK TO BOOST CAMPAIGN IMAGE". You got it right Fhemmmy.

successcertain: And the shipyard contract shall be awarded to china or Julius beger , not our local civil engineers who are seen as inferior/incapable and under estimated . Africans leaders are mentally brainwashed and brutalized with selfishness and greed by the European racist agenda of self centered government/white supremacy. Everyday by day Africans lose many talented souls due to complication from poverty in a hopeless dungeon of frustration.

Reverse is the case of enslavement of Africa, Africa will surfer hell from china until we learn to make use of our own talent. Welcome to 21 century enslavement of Africans gradually history repeat himself. Very soon chines will become official language of Nigeria and the negro race will be silence forever.

Jesus dude, wtf!!

Rossikk:

This is the problem we have in this country. Everybody is interested in sharing the national cake, but nobody is interested in baking the cake. How can you say that a shipyard that will generate employment for countless thousands of Nigerians, ''is the last thing on Nigerians' mind''?

The problem here is this cake, it shouldn't be national, a goat that is owned by everybody is going to starve, Nigeria should enable everybody to bake his own cake, that is the way a country works, public cake will not be baked properly and we will all continue to starve.

Yes, Mugabe is a horrible leader, after almost 30 years Zimbabwe have no economy to speak of, he is easily one of the worst rulers by any standard. By comparison the emperor of Japan turned Japan from a primitive state to a recognized power in about 30 years, even outperforming Russia who was a great power at the time. Zimbabwe is the perfect example of supreme ignorance and stewpidity, Mugabe took farms from the white people split them into smaller chunks and effectively ruined their commercial value and gave them to the black people, today many of them are abandoned, they are as failed as a state can get before it collapses and that man has had enough time to fix that country a few times over.

Jonathan is trying to do everything all by himself at once and at the end he will do nothing properly, that is why he keeps pushing back his electricity deadline. Is Aba receiving non stop electricity yet? Things like docks is the governor of the states job as it is not so important at the moment, the federal government should pursue such specific things only when it has dealt with the broader and more pressing things, they need his attention. He should be paying more attention to electricity and the fact that Nigeria's borders are porous and any meaningful manufacturing cannot happen here, Innoson is struggling, do something to make importing less attractive than buying from them.

Not gonna be voting PDP though, that is clearly national suicide and as the saying goes, if you don't vote number two then you are voting for number one so as things stand I will be voting number one even if Buhari is their candidate, it doesn't hurt that they are saying most of the right things.

No matter what may be wrong with Buhari, PDP absolutely needs to go, anybody who doesn't agree with that is really not worth talking to, Nigeria under PDP rule is just not working, they've had their go and they've failed us consistently.

After almost 14 years PDP has not improved Nigeria in any way, I don't see how anybody can claim to be for Nigeria and stand up to argue for them.

This is great and all but I do wonder if they are looking at it only from a pure production standpoint, agriculture is a lucrative business and it would slash the poverty rates in Nigeria if the system as a whole was changed so farmers produced and sold more for less. I feel like this rise is more a government funded boost than a better system of regulation that resulted in farmers being to produce more, the latter would be amazing.

I can't really know for sure but I feel like far too many of GEJs moves are helping the nation but not the people. For example which commercial farms increased production off this, how exactly did the government make it easier for them to produce, which roads were rehabilitated that allowed them to move their product around, did the government use that money to subsidise the purchase of infrastructure for farmers and what policies did they introduce, what has been changed in the ministry of agricultures protocol for example because if this is just the federal government injecting money to boost production then they are throwing good money after bad.

kkkp: Mourinho to Man united

God forbid bad thing. Man utd has won a lot of trophies, we don't just want to win any more we want to play well as well.

Under the constitution adopted in 1999, Jonathan was always going to fail, so was Obasanjo. Let us hope the constitution review fixes the impractical document.

PointB: Let's assume GEJ made the same comment. What will be the reaction of the ACN/APC goons?

I would tell you that Fashola's projects are hands on so the support of the people makes a difference, this is not the case with GEJ's projects, we mostly just hear about them, they are not on our streets and this is fine, it is exactly how it should be except our streets will never change like they do in Lagos (It is slow even there) unless the government sof the other states are not empowered, only GEJ can make that happen so he cannot make the same argument "even if it doesn't fly" when he clearly has not tried enough nor has he tried the right things.

Ile-Ife:


I think this article is more of give him a break, he is doing his best. read it.

Maybe but he has too much work on his plate, more work than he should have considering we are supposed to be a Federal Republic. He knows why that is and yet he is not going anything about it, we can only assume he feels he can handle it. In any case he will be judged like he is superman since he is trying to be 37 in 1.

PDPs response:

How could he afford those things when we have tried to strangle the life out of state governments? We call foul, EFCC investigate the man, he is stealing "our" chop money to build a better Lagos, he MUST be corrupt!!!

>.>

Come 2015 I will vote for whomever in my opinion is the very best candidate with little if any regard to their region of origin and I suggest you do the same.

Michaeljones36:

True.

The sad thing is that many in the North are obstacles to a complete switch because they are the disproportional beneficiaries of our 'national cake' system.

In the long term it should be in the North's best interest, but the short term pain is too much for them to take. So they cling to a failed system, that barely provides, out of fear of drowning.

Well no, short term northern states will have to borrow money from and this is very important "privately owned banks" to develop their economy, there is no reason for them to suffer even in the short term. No bank will be able to foot the bills and I get that but that is where you seek foreign investment. All in all they will lose a bit in the short term but they are all starving anyway, things will get better very quickly, that is the upside to it.

Can anybody tell me if the constitution review is talking about state autonomy or is it just useless local government autonomy?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Sorry.

@ :

Empowering Lagos' poor population won't do anything for the economy?


Creating an environment conducive to economic development for the common man is how you empower the youths, you need long term schemes and financial laws, allowing Makoko to gi up will help but it is not a long term plan and will bring with it its own negative long term complications.


GEJ is supposed to take care of Lagosians, not Fashola?


Yes, in a unitary system of government which Nigeria de facto is, the top and usually the only tier of government has full responsibility across the land, Nigeria is supposed to be federal rather than unitary but federal system mean Fashola should have full powers over Lagos including the money but in Nigeria the senate can make local governments autonomous and most importantly the federal government controls all the finances in the country, also states have no constitutions and all their practices are decided at the federal level which kind of defeats the purpose for the states in the first place but because there are states the presidency naturally expects that they will do the work. 99.2 % of Nigeria is the states and yet they get very little money annually which guarantees that they cannot effectively maintain what is already there talk less of adding more and any governor who tries to increase economic productivity in the state is not going to succeed because the federal government takes all the money and shares it among the states so you find that for every naira you make you are actually making something closer to 10 kobo as the money is shared with the federal government and 36 states so the business fails and public property like our railways fail into decay. Yes Lagos is GEjs responsibility because his government guarantees that no one else can transform the state or any other Nigerian state for that matter, that is what it means to be de facto unitary, the main governnment has all the responsibility.


Eko Altantic will 'raise' Nigeria's profile and everyone will ignore the fact that across the island the average person is living in poverty? What will the homelessness of the entire Makoko do for Nigeria's profile?

The Makoko region peoples lives is not something Fashola can fix and leaving people to their own devices is not a good idea, you need planning otherwise Lagos will eventually go to hell, you cannot do everything that is good as you see them, you need to have restraint at times for long term absolute efficiency. I know that it is a sad state Makoko is in but making short sighted decisions is not going to help anybody further along the lines. Rather go and ask Gej to get out of our states and stop meddling with their business, this is supposed to be a federal republic, not a unitary one.

The result of being an all powerful do it alone president monarch >.> is that he is too busy to visit his own people. Maybe if the Nigerian government was fixed to be truly federal all the work in the country wouldn't fall to him alone and he can be available to visit victims of disaster to show them that all is not lost, but that's just me.