₦airaland Forum

^-- Most of my extended family lives in Lagos.

As I said, in a country like Nigeria, the more (employed individuals), the merrier.

If the price of garri goes up due to a new guy from Mali, then the price of a a security guard/driver/etc also goes down. It isn't a zero-sum game; like I said, the net effect is positive.

bigass:
fine,buses may not be the ultimate solution, but anything that will reduce private cars on the road is the deal.do you know that 75% of vehicle on Lagos roads are private cars?which  most times carry just one passenger?why no convenient alternative!!!!!!!!!!!!! if these buses are truly neat,convient and cheap i will drop my car!i think it will go a long in alleviating the problems on the road

Why is the gov't the one doing it, though? Shouldn't they just encourage a private businessman to explore this opportunity? Let the private businessman take the risks of the business, not the public.

Phil Moane:
Hello sir, Sanity is Important.

I know you enjoy that where you are now.

If you want to know the recklessness of the transport situation in Lagos,

You will know how important this reform is.

Why not then just legislate higher standards with the existing danfos? It makes ZERO SENSE for the gov't to be spending money on what is effectively a private business!

Legislate higher standards to improve quality, don't waste enormous sums of money like this.

95% of the time, when a gov't gets in trouble, the root cause is it getting involved in a business that is best left in private hands.

^--- I'm happy to see these foreigners move to my part of the country. You can ban them in your part if you like, but leave us out that policy.

Nigeria is not the sort of country where a working individual consumes more than he produces, economically. There is almost nothing free in the country. So anybody who is there with a job (driver, gateman, pure water seller, etc) is a net positive.

Something is wrong with your methodology if you think any city/metropolitan area has 100 million people in it. The largest metropolitan area in the world right now is Tokyo, at 33 millionish.

^-- They adopted an additional language, not swapping out English for Yoruba. Many municipalities in the world have 2 or more official languages. . .

Hell, go visit South Texas and see what people speak there, and what is on the street signs, in addition to English.

Or a Polish neighborhood in Chicago. . .

Or visit the Chinese part of any major city in the west.

Much ado about nothing

violent:
Face out danfo== more jobless touts in the system!

This. I don't see what the point of this minibus thing is. We already have something that works, no? I think this is a waste of money.

Good read, thanks. Awolowo imo mismanaged the situation. It shouldn't have gotten to the point where Benin and Delta so badly wanted out. You have to do a better job of assuaging the feelings of minority groups, not cause them to feel fear of domination. And it really makes me angry that we gave up Midwest, while to this day the North still has significant influence over the Middle Belt. Not to talk of the East not having to give up his minority groups.

Awo was a good man, but not clear he was a great politician. Argh, I'm quite pissed off.

Why exactly was Awolowo locked up? He was accused of treason, but what really happened?

fstranger:
Sambo is a nobody when it comes to Nigeria politics
Atiku tried it, he lost heavily. And if you know who Atiku is, you'd understand where I am coming from
Also, GEJ does not have the experience and understanding of the kind of rofo rofo fight that goes into presidential election.

For him, power of incumbency means nothing without the backing of OBJ. And OBJ will never be caught dead in the same room with Tinubu, Fayose, Falana, HID and anyone who professes to be a follower of Awo; long story.

And without the backing of a former or present top military officer or a well oiled northern political movement, like the famous Yar'adua movement or the efficient PDM, you really cannot negotiate your way to Asorock. And if you did, you would not last a day. Without OBJ, GEJ is a dead man. Believe me!

I see. Didn't know a lot of that, thanks for the insight.

Even with the mystical "power of incumbency"? SW, SS, portions of the Midwest and North is enough to win, no? He does have a Hausa VP in Sambo.

igbobuigbo:
Cameroon is NIGERIA?Dude was talking about Igbo in Nigeria. He is correct to a great extent
The SW hates Igbo. The North barely tolerates Igbo and the SS is afraid of Igbos.

I completely recognize that Cameroon and Nigeria are distinct, lol. But the article I linked to might suggest that this is not something specific to Nigeria alone; seems the same happened there as well.

Abagworo: Your thoughts about the viability of GEJ in the ACN if he is forced out by say an Atiku/Igbo VP PDP ticket?

ezeagu:
I have the answer, and it's short:

No one in Nigeria likes the Igbo people, even among many of the minority groups in the South East.

End of answer.

The Igbo need to start thinking about their own survival instead of useless chieftancy titles.

Dunno if this is true definitively. However, I read a paper on JSTOR today about the Igbo in Cameroon:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/523673

Was kind of an interesting read. I'll attach a copy of it here if anyone wants to take a look at it.

Abagworo:
You see where Ohaneze's strategy might fail us.If the ACN finally adopts Buhari and just like is being rumored,a South-Westerner becomes his running mate,PDP will lose North and SW which forms the majority of our population.What this means is that

1)The ACN has gone federal

2)The SW still has chances of producing the President immediately after Buhari.

I'd like for us to find a better outcome/ally than Buhari, to be honest   I don't like the guy at all. Still, you have to be pragmatic in Nigeria.

Omenani:
A region that cannot feed itself? The North showed the SW that they need the North or they will starve.

You, in the SE accusing another land of not being able to feed itself?

Haba!

I think Yoruba in general are pretty regionalist. If you think about it, the people in Nigeria who are not regionalists and who spend a lot of time in lands or concerned about lands not their own have good reason for doing this. Their home territory sucks

Fortunately, God has blessed Yorubaland. Hence our regionalism.

igbobuigbo:
It is not that you do not want it. It is because you know you cannot have it in the nearest future having had it for 8 years a few years back. So stop massaging your ego.

Me personally? I'm not much interested in it for us, at least at this point in time. As you say, it might also be too expensive to attain. But that is sort of irrelevant to my point. Just because something costs X and you only have Y dollars doesn't mean you cannot loan the Y dollars to someone else who badly, badly wants this item. And if you do this properly, you can turn your Y dollars into a lot more than that. . .

You sort of misunderstand things. We don't really care about achieving presidency anytime soon. However, the SS, SE and North all want it pretty badly and will have to spend political capital to achieve this. We on the other hand have less interest in this, and so can keep our powder dry, so to speak. And spend this political capital elsewhere.

^-- This book is absolutely fascinating. I love anthropology now, lol. Highly recommend reading it, it is freely available for reading on google books. Describes Hausa culture in Ibadan in the 19th century. Lots of nice stuff there.

Honestly, I'm starting to hope Atiku wins the PDP primary, forcing GEJ to the ACN.

^--- I see. I'm starting to have a good sense of Nigerian history during the civil war period from a book I recently purchased, but don't know as much about that particular period. Any books (from relatively neutral sources) that you can suggest?

Any others who know of a good reference, let me know.

A man owns a lamp which contains a magical genie. When he rubs the lamp, the genie appears and grants him a single wish. Rather than asking for unparalleled wealth, immortality, good roads in naija, electricity, etc, instead he asked the genie to go after Soludo.

We must ask this man carefully why he didn't have the genie go after any of the other crooks in naija too  

Or ask for electricity in naija  

Interesting book I'm reading called Custom & politics in urban Africa: a study of Hausa migrants in Yoruba towns.

Page 30 and 31 describes a group of Hausa called the Kaka Gida in early and mid 1900s Ibadan who ended up becoming Yoruba-ized.

Kind of an interesting read:

http://books.google.com/books?id=orO0DRiPvGMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=custom+and+politics+i&source=bl&ots=eKVPbZ2j6b&sig=7s_7HLRyFEzpYG6OVtOUokzkb7g&hl=en&ei=L1LyTPqLMoS8sQOLpdCkCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Nothing wrong with speaking Yoruba in Yorubaland. Even Lebanese and Chinese in Lagos learn to speak the local language.

Err, my point was about something quite a bit different than yours.

Hmm, interesting development. Atiku is sharp.

Abagworo:
That is the thinking of a less privileged.If someone comes to your village and you abuse him you are correct.If someone comes to your village and you tolerate him then you are mumu.Sorry for your mentality.

But it is implied that the tolerance is only due to the threat of violence. They don't call him mallam in PH because he will kick their @ss if they do. But he knows better than to do that in Lagos.

PapaBrowne:
Sadly Yorubaland is very slow in even taking advantage of its proximity to Lagos. As close as the likes of Ibadan and Abeokuta are to Lagos, these cities have derived very little advantage from that proximity.

Agreed.

Funnily, it is the Eastern states that have been the smarter notwithstanding the distance and have made good use of the opportunities Lagos has provided.
A larger chunk of businesses operated in Lagos are run by Easterners and to a good extent also, south-southerners.

There is something wrong with the Yoruba mentality. We turn our noses up at lowly jobs that other groups do not mind taking Witness all these jabs about spare parts dealer, etc  Yet you have to start from the bottom before you get to the top. This is something we need to fix, asap. Arrogance is unnecessary and harmful. . .

For Yorubaland to take advantage, they would have to shed that socialist toga that Awo(no offence intended) handed down and embrace full fledged , the spirit of entrepreneurship!

None taken. He did the best he could given his resources and knowledge at the time, but it is becoming increasingly clear to me that my people need to wake up. This shall be rectified shortly I hope; I and others like myself will move back to Yorubaland within a few years.

We shall shake the Yoruba out of any lethargy, by force if necessary.

Abagworo:
This can easily prove some points about ethnic tolerance between Lagos and Port Harcourt from a non-Nigerian who has experienced both cities.

I hope you read properly. He is saying that if you call him mallam in PH, he will intimidate those people in PH to prevent them from doing so. But he knows that he cannot do that in Lagos, or there will be trouble.

Is this really an example of ethnic tolerance. . . or something else?

Mariory:
These people don't pay tax due to the kind of work they do.

They work, pay taxes on food, rent homes, etc. That contributes to the economy.

FG is saying Kano is more populated.

Na lie!

How can Lagos possibly cope with this influx?

Expansion into Yorubaland.

All in all, I am happy to see this.  It is good for Yorubaland to see immigration like this. Just needs to be properly managed.

Obiagu1:
Funny, if you could give me an answer to these two questions, then you are making sense, if not you aren’t.

If the minorities had enough influence in the 60s:
Why didn’t those minorities in the East get their own region? There agitation was even fiercer than that of Western minorities.

Why did the minorities stood by and allowed only Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo to be the only languages recognized by the constitution?


Every dialogue is not Yoruba vs Igbo competition, you have to use reason.

1) Again, X happening in region Y doesn't mean that X must also happen in region Z.
2) So this to you suggests that the minority groups had zero infuence, and thus should not have been strong enough for mid-west state to have been created?
3) I am not the one who has made this about competition. Your reasoning here is not particularly logical, this is why I have a problem with it. You are making too many unsupported assumptions.

9jarukus:
you are moronic not to think political motivation in action, gej hv stolen more than soludo obasanjo is the biggest looter in our history why not investigate him too

Maybe I should go rob a bank out here in California. And after robbing the bank, get in a gun fight with Canadian police. And then after that, run back to Nigeria and bribe a politician.

Then when all of my crimes come falling on my head, and the authorities in the US and Canada come after me, I'll blame GEJ, politics and Yoruba persecution.

Long story short, DON'T COMMIT CRIMES OUTSIDE OF NIGERIA AND THEN BLAME POLITICS! That excuse works in Nigeria, but DOES NOT work elsewhere in the world. Authorities outside of Nigeria don't give a damn about that excuse.