₦airaland Forum

Kobojunkie:
You are still missing the point, or maybe I am still not getting you. If the cost is fixed, and it costs about $20 per copy, how much cheaper is that to the publishing companies or the students who have direct access to the same  but find it is costly to go online, and then print them?

So your point is that if the book is available in some digital format to the bootleg publisher, this doesn't reduce his costs at all? What am I misunderstanding about the printing process that makes this true? Printers of fake books still use computers and some sort of digitial printing device, no? If I can provide him with a perfect, high-quality digital copy of the textbook used by the school system for the state, this doesn't reduce his costs of publishing at all?

Is this your point? Not trying to attack it, but just trying to understand it.

Kobojunkie:
But you are making a mistake here. The book is NOT FREELY available in the way you put it.  You have to factor in the cost of internet, Printing and maybe binding before you can make that claim.

The latter two costs are THE SAME for whatever books are currently available. The internet cost is a ONE TIME fixed fee. You download the PDF (probably 2-3 megs, max) once, get it on your computer, and then pay whatever fixed cost that is exactly ONCE.

It is not now the case that these books are not available in the market for purchase, so I don’t see how special online books really are in this case when these same, on the majority, have no computers  nor access to it.
But most of the books are already produced in Nigeria by the same printers, and many do not bother with license issues. I remember back when I was in secondary school, we already had the fake mcMillians(low quality prints) which were way cheaper than the originals but very poor quality.

I don't know how those low-quality prints were produced. Or what produced the low quality. Was it the ink, paper, or the copying mechanism?

WOW . . .  ol’ boy! When you don enter naija last? I understand what you idea there but dude, you have to get a better picture of what the real problem is to proffer solutions in this case. I don’t believe it is the case that publishers are affected by licensing issues in the way you think. How many of those do we even have in Nigeria?

Licensing might not be an issue, because they just copy existing books somehow. But don't you think their costs would be lowered, and thus the end cost to the consumer would be lower if they didn't have to clandestinely copy? Their current mechanism is probably something lame like using a scanner and low-quality OCR. Or hell, just scanning period and printing from that. Obviously, this alternative would reduce their costs (no need to scan, just download once and produce), thus reducing costs for the end consumer.

In any case, as others have said, we should probably continue this discussion elsewhere (e.g., the education forum.)

^-- I'm not necessarily accusing the source of bias. I just am hesitant to trust certain sorts of data unless I completely understand the methodology used. Maliciousness is not the only source of error, sometimes people just make mistakes. Or measure things incorrectly. Or use model A when model B is more appropriate. Sorta see what I'm saying?

@Kobojunkie: Whoops, sorry about the terrible math error, quite embarrassing. I should not have chosen Kinkos as an example of where to get a document printed.

Kobojunkie, look, I'm not envisioning people sitting at their computer printing out a textbook. Or a teacher/school doing this. The point is to say, "Here is the book we will use for this school system. It is freely available for anyone to print or produce."

Now, from there, existing book printers, publishers, entrepreneurs, etc can then produce books for the school system for very low costs.

I realize how poor my Kinkos example was. But I do want to point out that this type of thing IS being done in the 3rd world, especially in India. One of my friends for example, every time he goes home to India I have him go to the market and pick up certain books for me. Most recent one he got for me is a copy of a book ("Real Analysis" by Royden) for the equivalent of $5 bucks. Of course, it is a paperback version and not quite as high quality as the original, but also much cheaper than the same book new from amazon.com (like $80 there.)

You see what I'm trying to do here? Make the knowledge itself easily available and then let the free-market and entrepreneurship whittle down the costs of the knowledge as much as possible.

So do you see my point? If you make it freely available, costs WILL be driven down.

Do any of you guys have relatives doing their schooling in those states? How much do you spend a year on their uniforms, school fees, books, etc? Just a rough estimate would suffice, trying to get a ballpark figure (e.g., 10k naira for primary, 15k for JSS, 20k for SSS.)

Thanks in advance, just trying to get a sense of how much things cost.

Kobojunkie:
WHAT? Do you realize how much it costs to print these PDF/online books, even here in the United States, let alone in some high school or primary school in Ekiti, Nigeria?   Ah! I am a professional and would rather spend my money actually PURCHASING books than thinking to print those books from online.

I have a HP 2800 here in my room and I would NOT DARE to print a  150 or so book on this machine cause I know how much dent that will be on my ink. lol  Even attempting that at the local library will cost you more than 30 bucks, and you think it will come out for Naira 200?

Kobojunkie, think of Kinkos, or any of these copy shops. You take it to them and they charge you 10-15 cents per page. Print 500 pages for like $5-8 bucks, or something.
Look, it doesn't even make sense for us to be worrying how much it will cost to print. Put it online and make it freely available, and some enterprising entrepreneur will make the selling of those books his livelihood. I'm pretty sure the economics of it will work out from his end.

^--- I'll take a look at that report too.

Yeah, the report on poverty you linked to from that article is basically Table 3.1 on page 78 of the NHDR long survey I linked to. But it is hard to say how meaningful or trustworthy the data is unless we know their methodology (for example, how is poverty being defined here?) And the data seems inconsistent with data from other sources. (e.g., Table 3.4, which details things like access to clean water, waste disposal, etc.)

igbobuigbo:
If you find a state such as Niger as wealthy, then surely it depends on who is recruited by UNDP for the data collection since they use Nigerian experts for these studies. I guess like the population count, someone will rig the data to suit their region. But from anecdotal evidences and studies conducted by others such as NAPEP, Anambra is doing well. Really, that is why they are known as Eze egos (kings of money) in Nigeria. I will go with the NAPEP one rather than the UNDP one.

Their (UNDP) methodology for estimating State GDP is flawed, somehow. It seems to dramatically overstate the GDP of the northern states. That is the conclusion I've come to by reading their methodology. Don't get me wrong btw, this isn't meant to attack Anambra, which I'm sure is doing well, as NAPEP claims (though of course I'd love to see their methodology as well.) But it seems a lot of the statistics used (for example, the state GDPs posted on Wikipedia) are wrong.

I don't know for sure if someone is being purposely deceitful or they just don't know what they are doing, but in any case the state GDP data is false.

Kobojunkie: Err, what? PDFs can be printed and distributed widely.

For example, there is a very popular book used by those in my field of science, called "Elements of Statistical Learning." I own a physical copy of the book. However, the authors got permission from the publisher to make a PDF copy of the book available on their site. So if you are very cheap (as some students in my department are), you could just print out the entire book rather than paying for it.

Sort of see where I'm going here? If a PDF copy of Ekiti State's SSS calculus book is freely available online, then very soon it will be available at the corner market for 200 naira.

Kobojunkie:
Also need to consider quality of books being used and what exactly the students really have access to.

There is a book company (Dover Books) that grabs the licences for expired academic books from the 90s, 80s and republishes them cheaply. I sort of wanted to do the same thing, but instead of selling it, just making it freely available online and convincing say Ekiti state to use those books as their curriculum. If the books becomes freely available online, then you should be able to go to the market and just buy them essentially for the cost of the paper.

I think also if there is no profit motive attached, you could convince these book companies to donate a free licence for the books without charging a dime. And also provide the source (usually latex) for the books, so that they could be updated and customized for specific needs.

But I guess from what some have said in this thread, this wouldn't be that useful, since books are relatively cheap anyway.

Why is anyone even bringing up GSM? Forget GSM. What about construction, massive gains in agricultural productivity? Almost every industry grew strongly under his regime.

As if GSM alone could power an economy! What fraction of the economy is GSM, sef? Obviously something that is a tiny party of your economy is not going to cause GDP per capita to nearly triple.

Look at the following table, compare GDP growth in each sector over the 3 different time periods:

https://i53.tinypic.com/117sot3.png

(45th page of this PDF: http://web.ng.undp.org/documents/NHDR2009/NHDR_MAIN-REPORT_2008-2009.pdf)

Look, the GDP per capita nearly TRIPLED in his 8 years. Only a fool would pretend that the only thing he did was GSM. That is only a tiny fraction of it, as the above chart indicates.

Quite a lot. The economy exploded growthwise under his tenure. Agriculture in particular got a lot stronger, as did communications.

Here is a plot of the national GDP over the years, for example:
http://i55.tinypic.com/2ywvez4.png

National wealth nearly tripled.

I don't like the man, but I cannot say he was ineffective.

Olaolufred:
When a mad man thinks soooo deep,

He comes up eating sand.

Claiming it is the best grains ever.

Think deeper and conclude better.

+1

Bump again. Surely someone here has looked at this problem and figured out what the truth is? For example, has anyone compared internally generated revenue figures and federal allocations to listed state GDP? Or done a regression analysis involving some of the HDI factors?

Somebody must have done a thorough job in figuring this out, so don't be shy, talk

@igbobuigbo: Just about finished reading through the report. Pretty clear to me now that the GDP and probably population figures for Nigerian states are probably all false. Too many discrepancies. Unfortunately while I know statistics decently well and feel that there is enough data here to accurately estimate the true figures, I don't know demography and cannot say how it should be done. Going to see if I can schedule a meeting with a demography professor here and see if he can provide some pointers on how to approach the problem.

Quite an interesting problem though, trying to figure out what here is real and what is fake.

Nice video

I have mixed feelings on this issue. I see the value in marrying Nigerian, but it isn't as easy as people make it out to be. The demographics don't really work out that nicely, unless you live in very specific cities (e.g., Houston and DC suburbs.)

bump

oyb:
sort of like nigeria football in the 1994 olympics.

Nigerian football will rise again one day, I hope.

There is a very interesting (and long, 180+ pages) report by the UNDP on Nigeria here: http://www.ng.undp.org/documents/NHDR2009/NHDR_MAIN-REPORT_2008-2009.pdf

On page 153 of this report is Table 1.1, which lists the population and per capita GDP for each state.

I've copied and pasted those two columns into a spreadsheet, which is now on Google Docs here:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsNUaGBnBF1KdGpuMklLeFdUZGFsRlRaOFJVUjk4LXc&hl=en&authkey=CPzg4awD

I also highlighted some states I have questions about, states ranked #9 through #17 in GDP/capita.

First of all, how on earth is it possible for Niger to be the 9th richest state (per capita) in Nigeria? Or Zamfara #10? Is the wealth of your typical Zamfara man really 5 times that of your typical Edo man ($1585 GDP/capita for Zamfara versus $320 for Edo)?

I have no clue how to make sense of any of this data. Niger State for example is supposedly 5 times as wealthy as Kwara, its neighbor to the south. Shouldn't then the Northern part of Kwara be the wealthiest part?

Right now, I'm extremely confused. Population falsification alone would not explain these numbers, since most of us believe that the population figures in the North are inflated, not deflated. But if this is true, then this means that that Niger State is even WEALTHIER than this number indicates. Which seems mindblowing, to me.

I'm starting to think that these reported GDP per state numbers were just completely made up, and are entirely false. Can someone shed some insight into this? Which numbers can I trust, and which should I not trust?

L. KRavitz:
suxes honesty and integrity has no color! whether its told by a white man, green man or purple man, a lie is a lie. we should quit this our own syndrome thing. if we really cared about ourselves why is there s much suffering in Nigeria today? maybe u should channel your support to more reasonable causes.

Let us not pretend that the emotions involved are not understandable. If my own relative were proven to be a fraud, I would not throw him under the bus. My first instinct would be to think it is a witchhunt, etc.

So the emotions and responses of some posters here are understandable.

ya'll need to petition Seun, he isn't responding to this chat request

Not seen enough Nigerian girls in bikinis to judge, but the ones I've seen look pretty good.

tensor777:
Don't kid yourself there . It is NOW mandatory for[b] ALL[/b] signatories to the IAEA treaty to the stipulated rigourous safety standards and to submit to regular inspections,

Fine and well, but like I said, I prefer American and French technology in this matter over Russian. I also prefer Honda Civics over other cars of the same class, surely I'm allowed to have this preference

@AloyEmeka: violent and babapupa are in this case correct. For example, if I claim on my resume that I have a Masters from University X, then a company that wants to hire me will certainly call and confirm that I actually was given that degree. Privacy rules protect your transcript (i.e., whether you got your degree after failing the mandatory class and then retaking it to only get a C, versus just taking it once and getting an A), but not whether I actually have the degree or not.

Secondly, much of this became a matter of public record after Emeagwali's lawsuit. You can google and read the case for yourself.

OnlyTruth's pov is based on pretty sound reasoning, imo. Supporting Jonathan allows the SE to ally with the SS and realign the axis of power in Nigeria southwards. If GEJ doesn't win, then the status quo for the SE doesn't really change; they'll just continue to be marginalized (I actually don't know if marginalization is occuring one way or another, but this is what I am inferring is true.)
But even in a loss, they've found a powerful ally that can be counted on to execute future projects with.

Yet if GEJ wins (by hook or crook), they have a strong change of having a much better position overall in Nigeria.

Really, it is a good gamble. Mike's concerns are not without merit; he wants to gain the X units of immediate utility by supporting a different candidate, perhaps one of the northern ones. But OnlyTruth's likely counterargument is that there is no real guarantee that a Northern president will pay X when time comes, since he has a natural power base already.
Furthermore, who would you rather ally with longterm, the SS or the North? Me personally, I'd prefer the SS. Too much of the North's power is based on election-rigging, military strength, and falsified demographics. Those are very ephemeral strengths, in my opinion.

Pretty sharp guy, OnlyTruth. Seems I underestimated him.

^-- I guess things work differently in Nigeria than here. Perhaps it is true there that an alcoholic is more likely to be a functioning member of society than a marijuana addict. But that is not the case where I live.

I see plenty of homeless alcoholics in the streets of my city, guys with their lives ruined by alcohol addiction, sleeping in gutters. I haven't seen or heard the equivalent for a marijuana addict.

^-- Of course. Yoruba and Igbo are in the same language group, so almost by definition they must have had a common origin. Probably the two ethnic groups also have common ancestry. Indeed, everyone in southern Nigeria probably has common ancestry.

^-- Part of the reason I'd prefer a US or French make Nuclear Power Plant to a Russian one

Safety standards are higher in the former two countries than the latter. Russia is like Nigeria, in some respects. Life is very cheap

^--- Was your friend a dealer? I can understand being treated harshly if you are a suspected dealer and caught with large amounts. But if small amounts for recreational use, then that seems pretty harsh.

Anyway, I agree that these things should be abused.

^-- Same with alcohol and cigarettes. But imo marijuana is no worse. Most of the time the problem is addiction, not the item itself. Even a pounded yam addict will ruin his life just as quickly as an alcoholic will 

Cocaine though is much more dangerous, since your body becomes chemically dependent on it very rapidly. And it is very expensive.

Eh, I didn't grow up in Nigeria, so I don't know what the attitude towards it there is. But here at least in most of the places I've lived in the US, people are pretty casual about it. Plenty of people smoke weed recreationally here, isn't really that big a deal (though of course it is technically illegal, and will get you fined if you are caught.)

Cocaine and hard drugs that will ruin your life are a whole different kettle of fish though.