₦airaland Forum

I don't know how the North will fix their own situation. Lagos at least, we can spend money to build barriers. The property is worth enough money that cash can be raised to save the city.

But with the North, I don't know where they will find money to fight the desert. Who is going to raise the billions necessary to fight the desert in a land where property prices are low anyway? These northern governors need to start saving their people's money and start planning for the future.

vigasimple:
If you red the statement in bold, simply confirms what we already know about NORTH 'BORN TO RULE'  Political Geography, Kwara is North to make up the numbers, when comes to choosing the candidate, Kwara is Yoruba,  It was good that Saraki enter the race to expose the hypocritcal North.

Anybody who think Atiku and co are the best for them good for themwhatever happens to them after the election

I'm glad Saraki was denied. Serves the jackass right.

^-- Agreed. Hopefully I'll be in Lagos within 2 or 3 years. The progress he is making is fantastic.

na_so:
I think i agree with you here. If GEJ looses the PDP primaries, that in itself will heighten anti-pdp sentiments in the SS, the chances of the opposition therefore would be stronger.

The problem with nigeria/Nigerians is after just 1 yr into say a buhari/tinubu administration , the SE and SS would most likely mend fences, and cry marginalisation and voicing there desire to opt out of the nigerian project, or at least sustain hostilities in the SS, such that oil revenues will drop massively and put serious pressure on the system.

Indeed. But I am sure that the ACN recognizes this potential problem, and will address the needs of the SS and SE in order to prevent it. For example, completing certain federal projects in both regions, a slight increase in oil derivations that go to the SS. Moves like this will not kill the rest of the country, especially if we have good admistrators to grow the rest of the national economy.

It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Everyone can and should win if Buhari/ACN is voted in.

Anyway, we will cross that bridge if/when we get to it. But I think it is a problem that can be resolved leaving all sides mostly happy.

texazzpete:
The Chinese are probably busy downloading GEJ's email and poring over NNPC's oil portfolio even as we speak

Probably true If we cannot secure our borders, i doubt we have secured out computer systems either.

birdman:
Tinubu has no criminal record:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200302110482.html
http://news.biafranigeriaworld.com/archive/ngguardian/2003/feb/10/article02.html

Can someone can supply a solid, verifiable link proving otherwise? TIA

Thanks for the links. I hope that Kobojunkie reads your post and comes to understand why innuendo and slander are harmful.

@na_so: Agreed. But if the PDP is the one responsible for doing this by knocking off GEJ and replacing him with Atiku and an Igbo, then we are not the ones doing the denying. The blame will belong fully to the PDP. Not the ACN.

If GEJ wins the primary, then I can see your perspective. But if Atiku/Igboman? Nobody can be angry at us for hunting that particular prey.

isale_gan2:
I couldn't agree more with what you just said.  These people that are so blind to the evils of the U.S and their agents really confound me.  I've seen some outrageous comments on an earlier thread.  Already seen a couple here.  What is wrong with "our" people?  It's sickening how blind some of them are.  I applaud WikiLeaks.

And, it's not simple espionage.  Wait until we see all their notes about all the leaders they worked to overthrow in Africa, etc. 

-Isale Gangan

If the US were as weak as Nigeria, and Nigeria were as strong as the US, would we not do the same exact thing? Most of this stuff is just human nature.

Katsumoto:
QE is a monetary policy that is used to stimulate growth and is used best when you have two conditions
1. Interest rates are so low (0%) that you can no longer lower it to increase supply of funds
2. Inflation is near 0%.
3. Deflationary pressures are so great that a Central Bank uses QE to fight deflation.

The process usually involves the central bank printing money to buy government or corporate bonds. The purchase of corporate bond increases the domestic supply of currency while the purchase of government bonds that is heavy on the international financial market can also be a tool to lower the value of a currency leading to increased exports.

Thanks for the definition. The Wikipedia article is also good.

^-- Na lie! Paul Pierce ke? Finals MVP doesn't mean Season MVP. Pierce, who got dominated by LeBron in the Cleveland series?

@jason12345: He is correct in that those groups did participate on the Nigerian side against Biafra (though the core North and Middle Belt was a majority of the army.)

But this is not the whole story itself. I highly recommend buying that book or some other neutral account of the war. Or getting it from your library. Part of me believed that Nigeria did starve Biafra. I also used to believe it was an Igbo plot. Even the march into the Midwest was basically a high-risk, high-reward gamble by a desperate Ojukwu. It wasn't necessarily malevolence or evil by the Biafran leadership, it was mostly just simple incompetence.

Anyway, read the book (or some other neutral account.) I wish it were freely available online so everyone could have a copy and know the history

Here is a pretty good explanation:

http://economics.about.com/cs/money/a/print_money.htm

An excerpt:

In short prices will go up after a drastic increase in the money supply because:
1. If people have more money, they’ll divert some of that money to spending. Retailers will be forced to raise prices, or run out of product.
2. Retailers who run out of product will try to replenish it. Producers face the same dilemma of retailers that they will either have to raise prices, or face shortages because they do not have the capacity to create extra product and they cannot find labor at rates which are low enough to justify the extra production.

^--- Lol @ you thinking KG was not the best player on the 2008 team. DPOY, 3rd place in MVP votes, arguably the best player in the postseason.

Who, pray tell then was the best player on that team? Rondo?

And KGs knee troubles happened in the following year, 2008-2009. He was healthy for all of 2007-2008.

Dede1:
You could have scored unquantifiable political points if you had purged yourself of the symptoms of revisionist Biafran historian. I am a leaving eye witness to the Yoruba/Hausa/Fulani/Tiv/Ijo/Edo/Urhobo/Itsekiri/Kauri/Nupe/Bachama/Esan/Idoma/Gwari etc episode with Biafrans. Since such well thought-out unification, I have never regarded these people anything other than northerners.

I purchased and read a good historical account over the weekend (The Nigerian Civil War by John De St. Jorre) and noticed many discrepancies between the official Biafran propoganda (e.g., 3 million dead, starvation policy, etc) and what the author actually documented. In the book, he actually goes through and debunks many of the stories Biafra cooked up, in collaboration with the PR agency Biafra hired from New York.

You can continue to believe whatever you lies you like, my mind is at peace now that I know the truth about that war.

^--- Atiku Abubakar is now "God's Candidate?"

Which God? You are quoting the Bible, but surely you are not referencing the God of that same book. I doubt Muslims view Atiku as anointed by God either, lol.

This is why I'm always suspicious of those who try to mix religion and politics.

martinosi:
But the real wealth comes as you said in the mark-up ie Processing eg refinieries, food processing, processing of Base metals.

The above cannot be done competitively without good power supply. This should be the #1 priority of the Nigerian gov't, almost everything else is irrelevant. If we do this, then the sky is the limit.

Dede1 is a revisionist Biafran historian. Most of his posts can be understood in that light. From his perspective, Yoruba/Hausa/Fulani are mostly the same.

Black_Revo:
^^

Let me start with option (B)

(B) Nigeria and Benin belongs to the Ecowas organization so technically you cannot close the border because goods and people are meant to flow freely without restrictions through this agreement.

I'm not closing the border, I'm securing it from smugglers. I'm sure there are heavy existing fees for people importing rice, but I suspect much of that $4 billion in lost business is people who simply are able to avoid paying the import duties, by hook or by crook.

Securing the border is not so easy as you think, corruption, technical efficiency and manpower to do that does not exist.

This is not a good enough answer. If the Nigerian gov't cannot secure its border, what purpose does it serve? Why in 2010 can we not control what enters and exits the country? This is not the middle ages. If the Nigerian gov't cannot do it, then they'd better subcontract it to someone who can. What do you mean there isn't the manpower to secure the border? In a land of 150 million people, we cannot find the manpower?

There are so many interest involved in this line of business so it is not easy. This is not the border between between mexico and USA,   it is very vast stretching from lagos state up to far northern part of Nigeria in sokoto.

Two separate points:
1) By and large, nobody smuggles rice, cassava, toothpicks, etc across the Mexico/US border. It isn't cost effective, when you can buy these goods cheaply from Walmart, Safeway or whatever. The sort of goods smuggled across the Mexico/US border are narcotics, namely cocaine.
2) Why is the length of the border an issue? The $4 billion in goods flow from one small geographical location, the port city of Cotonou. If we make border security tight in the southern part of our shared border with the Benin Republic, then we raise the costs and reduce the profitability of the smugglers. See what I'm saying? Even a smuggler has to bring his rice/cassava/toothpicks into Cotonou, but can only smuggle them across the border in Sokoto (where the true population of the country is lower), then the profitability of his business is reduced. We do not need to make the entire border impregnable, the point is to attack his profitability. So in the south where he would love to smuggle, we block that and raise his costs.

(C) Every nation is independent to the choice of what goods they import into their country so we cannot dictate for them except going into a joint trade agreement or understanding.

Indeed, I'm not suggesting that we have the power to bully them. Let's seek to work together with them. But even if they are not cooperative, we still must prevent the Benin Republic and Cotonou from leeching off of the Nigerian consumer.

(A) Its all about the free market and open competition but to me a country to some extent should protect its domestic manufacturers. If you place too much ban then countries will also reciprocate the gesture back to you because the world is a global village. No nation is an island to itself because you also need to export and engage in international trade when the home market becomes saturated.

Who cares? What does Nigeria produce? What items will they ban that we produce? Oil?  
How can we be worrying about retaliation when we produce nothing?

The oil really is not enough. 2 million barrels a day at $80 per, population of 150 million, what is that, barely above $1 per person per day? And this is even if it were shared properly, and most of the money were not mismanaged, stolen, carried off by foreign oil companies, etc.

Compare this to a country like Norway, which produces 2+ million barrels per day, but has a population of only 5 million people. That is $32 a day. And they've already built up substantial infrastructure and industry in other areas.

At the end of the day, a land that produces nothing of value will be very poor. What concretely does Nigeria produce of value today, aside from oil?

We need constant electricity, to take advantage of the cheap labor and to actually start producing finished products. Once we have this, most everything else will take care of itself. But until there is electricity in Nigeria, we will be poor.

EDIT: comparison to norway

Has anyone been able to find the original report written by the World Bank online? If so, please share the link.

So here seems to be the synposis:

[list]
[*] We've banned certain products.
[*] Benin Republic has not banned these same products.
[*] Importers route the products into Cotonou.
[*] The porous border allows them to import the products from Cotonou to Nigeria.
[/list]

So the World Bank's suggestion from this is we should

A) Reduce the bans, so that the $4 billion in import business we lose to the Cotonou port goes to Nigeria instead.

Fine and well. But what if instead we considered

B) Closing the porous western border: hire more security, put in place more checkpoints, confiscate smuggled goods, in general make life miserable for would-be smugglers.
C) Pressuring Cotonou to ban the same items we ban too? I'm not sure what "stick" we have to use to pressure Benin, but surely we are not powerless against them.

Can someone explain to me why (B) and (C) cannot be considered first? If both of those options are completely impossible or infeasible, then fine, we don't have any choice, do (A). But why is the World Bank immediately suggesting (A) without exploring (B) and (C)?

texazzpete:
Yes, roads and the environment are not free. Do these teachers and market women not pay taxes too?
Your assumption that these people do not contribute anything in the way of taxes is rather silly.

How much can these market women and teachers earn in a year? At their current tax levels, there is no way they'll be paying enough money in taxes to cover the deleterious impact of their cars on naija.

If you are suggesting allowing the importation of older cars, but charging additional heavy fees on these cars (e.g., something on the order ot $50-200 per year, whatever it will cost to account for the negative impact), I might be fine with that.

But if it is only going to be some chicken-scratch amount, then I'm not interested.

Again, what prevents these people from just buying fairly used cars from other Nigerians? If you want a 15 year old car, why must you import it? Why not just buy from within the country?

myprestige:
I have strong reservations about the plan by the Federal Government to lift the ban on the importation of textile and sundry items such as tooth picks and cassava.

According to reports, the Minister of Finance took the decision because the World Bank had complained that the nation’s list of banned items was “unnecessarily too long” and also to check smuggling and increase the revenue accruable to the Federal Government from import duties.

With all due respect to the World Bank, why should we be concerned what they think in this matter? They cannot back up their complaints with anything more than words. They have no "stick" with which to force Nigeria to open up our markets. They would only have leverage if we were already a major exporter of anything but oil. Since all we export is oil, then we are safe from any threats from international trade organizations.

There is absolutely no reason for Nigeria of all countries to be importing cassava. A crop we were leaders at and showed the rest of the world how to commercialize, we will now be importing? God forbid!

I can never be a PDP man, though. I am ACN and unwilling to change teams. Unless they become despotic like the PDP.

OK, aside from my choice of a party that isn't in your opinion strong enough, how have I been sentimental? 

@fstranger: It is hard for me to understand how what I've said conflicts with your post. The lesson we have learned from the PDP and indeed Nigeria itself is that this is purely a game of power. Nothing more, nothing less. Have I led you to believe that I'm using sentiment rather than practicality to formulate my positions?

Ovularia:
The report states that Africa will suffer disproportionately from the negative effects of climate change despite contributing less than 5 per cent of global green house emissions.

Sometimes I feel that the world is a very perverse place, and justice doesn't exist. How can those who polluted the environment the least suffer the most?

^-- Suppose temporarily that all what you say is true (something I'm not at all convinced of and can expound on point-by-point later, if you like), and there is no chance of the ACN beating the PDP.

Should we then just give up? We still have to put out the strongest ticket possible. Ribadu very likely is not the best that can be done. Even if some variant of Buhari/ACN Southerner flops, at least we know we tried our best.

sbeezy8:
Tinubu and SW are beyond VP promises- all or nothing! Tinubu shouldnt even consider it.

Let us not overreach. Let us only take what can safely be taken. We can take the VP position with 50%+ probability with an old man in Buhari as president. Even if we are somehow not able to gain the presidency after old man Buhari's tenure, we can leverage our new position into something else. That to me is a better proposition than the 2% probability we could take the presidency directly (and at the cost of great political capital.)

The beauty of this too is that we aren't spending much political capital achieving this objective. All we are doing is taking advantage of the fact that both PDP choices are very weak in the North, and can be defeated there. So we are not directly spending our own political capital by making deals to get the SS, SE, or North behind us. We are only taking advantage of a mistake the PDP made.

This is the weakest the PDP is ever likely to be, with Atiku and GEJ going at each other like this. All of the material they use to slander and tar each other, we can use when it comes time for the ACN candidate to attack the PDP one. If GEJ is defeated, we can directly use statements he himself made that suggest that Atiku is a poor choice! And vice versa.

If the PDP comes out of 2011 with the presidency intact, then they'll probably hold onto it forever. If we unseat them now, then their party is broken and scattered to the four winds. And then this leaves a new political dispensation, one in which the ACN is one of the more formidable parties in the land. This is the time to strike, and to hit as hard as you possibly can, imo.