₦airaland Forum

dappssee:
I've been using that e-mail addy for over 7 years now

@IlekeIdI: Yeah, I checked it out, it looks legit. www.email.com offers different free email address domains, one of which is usa.com. Just seemed weird, I've never seen it before in my life.

I think she was confused by the @usa.com email, I've never seen one like that before in my life

@dapsee: Are you on Yahoo Messenger? I just messaged you.

Well, the "to who" part is still an open question. . .if the community has had such difficult time locating relatives, then perhaps this is for a good reason

But the likelihood of him growing up and becoming an area boy is less likely in Ekiti than in Lagos. Plus it is a bit cheaper to live and school over there, I think.

Anyway, let's see what this woman says (if she even responds to my message!)

Ideally there would be some sort of charity that you could directly send money to on his behalf, and that would spend the money on him for education, food, housing, etc.

Does such exist in Nigeria?

Ileke-IdI:
He is two years old, how will the money reach him?
The best that can be done is to find a trustworthy  Ekiti person in Lagos to send money to. We have to also be sure to not only see to the child's wellbeing, but also to the kind-hearted Oladapo that took Ayo under his wings.

Mrs. Olaniyi is just something else. I cant imagine leaving my child motherless and separating him from his sister. Nigerian women and their mentality that sons belong to their father while the daughters belong with their mother. I mean, how could you even leave your child behind? While many are praying for children. Makes no sense.

I facebooked Patience Ogbo. Maybe she will know of a way to make sure that money safely reaches him.

I honestly think he should be sent back to Ekiti State rather than living in Lagos, too.

How can I help this kid out? I'd donate money, but is there even a mechanism to ensure it reaches him and isn't stolen?

Blazay:
Same as I stated.

OK, maybe I misread you.

No. You take jobs away from Nigerians with all that your 'investing'. What are all your electrical engineering graduates doing all over Nigeria? Bunkering oil?
Electricity should strictly a Nigerian domain with minimum interference from the outside world.  What on earth do you produce? Are you not tired of getting ripped off by what you can do by yourself?  Please, shed that "big man" mentality and put Nigerians to work for a change. You have the brains. Encourage privatization with strict regulation. Period.

Nope, it is very capital intensive. So you need to attract outside investment. . . or convince Nigerian banks to loan you the $500 million to setup a nicely sized power plant. Unfortunately, Nigerian banks charge assloads of money in interest, in part because there are way more profitable things they can do with their money than investing in electricity generation.

Regarding who maintains/builds the power plants, yes, no reason not to hire Nigerian engineers. But this is a secondary issue. Primary issue is financing.

What group of sane investors would want to dabble into the Nigerian power sector with all that red-tape and saboteurs' mentality/complex. Only Nigerians can fix that kind of problem indigenous to Nigerians and perculiar to the underdeveloping mindset.

Assuming you can get rid of the red tape, then I think foreigners are the perfect sort of person to target. The toll road that Fashola built by giving a 30 year concession? Iirc, some Australian bank put up a lot of the capital. This is the sort of things Western banks like to invest in. Securities that are relatively safe (at least, compared to other things in Africa) and have a predictable income stream.

Nigerians on the other hand seem to be interested in higher-rewarding investment opportunities. Which to be fair makes a lot of sense; there are lots of more profitable businesses one can probably invest in in a place like Nigeria than generating power.

I think you are contradicting yourself. Only with privatization can the role of the federal government be diminished. So, which do you want? What side are you arguing for or against?

I'm arguing for less federal gov't interference and control.

May as well just rename the county the Federal Republic of Shellgeria. Or something.

strangerf:
^^^

Pray until something happens

Is this all that Nigerians want to do? Pray that things turn out better, rather than taking some sort of action? I weep for this land.

slap1:
+1. But don't think the government is blind to this way of thinking. The truth is Shell will lose billions of dollars if this happens. That is why they spend a few million dollars on their spies who kick against ideas like this. The truth is without the help of some greedy Nigerians, Shell won't be able to milk us as much as they're doing now.

Spies have only so much influence. If ALL Nigerians are against something and public outcry becomes huge enough, it doesn't matter what their spies say or do. This is why I'm saying we cannot let this drop. We cannot just be here on Nairaland discussing it. You have to make sure that your non politically aware friends and neighbors are aware that Shell Oil has spies in the Nigerian government, brags about it, and attempts to negotiate secret deals with the US government that directly harm Nigerian interests.

Witness the Sanusi brouhaha and how the lawmakers backed down. If Nigerians act en masse against something, no power within Nigeria (or outside of it) can stop them.

Kilode?!:
If you have a family, share the knowledge with them, with friends and acquaintances do the same, every bit helps, till we revolt or get a benevolent visionary leader who can lead this country right. We cannot afford to resign to fate. Every little bit of positive propaganda helps. Our future depends on it.

For those of you on Facebook, share a link to this article on Facebook so your friends can see it! If you are on Twitter, tweet it. If all you have is email, mail it to your friends. Nigerians need to know who truly rules the country.

@Bluetooth: Capitalism is fine. But you don't go into business with a partner who is looking to stab you in the back. This is basically what Shell is. In truth, I don't think we can find any partner who will not stab us in the back, if they have the chance. So rather than giving this 50% share to any one individual, why not split it among 5 individuals who hate each other?

Let Venezuela be one of the five, Shell be another, Russia a third, China a 4th, Brazil a 5th. Rather than all of it in Western hands.

oyinda.:
for those of you calling for nationalization, remember what happened to Mossadeq in Iran when he tried to nationalize iranian oil in 1953s. he was assasinated by US CIA and replaced by a puppet.

US is hell bent on ruling the world and controlling all world resources.

I want them to divest. There is no pretext for invasion if we pressure them to sell. This is different from seizing their assets outright.

And we shouldn't permit them to increase any of their assets within Nigeria. Venezuela and Brazil have oil companies, do they not? As well as the expertise. Screw Shell, screw Chevron, they can both go f.u.ck themselves. Nigeria doesn't need any of these oil companies. We need to find other allies to work with, imo.

Hmm, I'd never even heard of this plant before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moringa


Quite interesting!

strangerf:
The book gave the Ibadan-centric version of Yoruba history; moreso, it was written by a lay historian.

True and true.

The guy has nothing to back up some of his claims.

Not quite true, there are some other anthropologists and historians who have checked up on some of these claims. Check on JSTOR.

I'd read the book with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Nothing wrong with that; you should do that with any sort of text like this.

We need to organize protests against Shell. I want them to divest their assets out of Nigeria and return home. Public pressure against them is the answer. People need to put this on Facebook, make sure it is circulated in the news so that ALL Nigerians know who the enemy is.

Why are the Niger Delta miltants sef considered our enemy? They fight only Shell and its puppet, the Nigerian federal government.

So why should we upset if they kidnap oil workers? Or disrupt Shell's oil production? They are freedom fighters and anti-imperialists, are they not?

Yeah, so I saw those links.

My basic point is simple. Let me illustrate it with an example involving my own ethnic group, the Yoruba:

1) Yorubaland was inhabited by somebody, even before Ile-Ife was founded (found?) by Oduduwa.
2) Those inhabitants clearly are as old as the Ijaw. Unless we believe humans populated Ijawland FIRST before filling out the rest of West Africa. Which seems implausible.
3) Most of the DNA of those original inhabitants still exists in the Yoruba. Unless we believe that those inhabitants were wiped out and replaced, or overwhelmed by that of Oduduwa and his band.

So again, I'm not sure what this "We were here first" claim is supposed to mean. Especially if it turns out it was something like Oduduwa and his 50 homies conquering and breeding with a larger group of say 1K indigenous people; in this case, the "foreign" DNA would be roughly 5%.

And FWIW, my own subethnic group, the Ekiti? Here is what Samuel Johnson has to say about us:

This view will also to some extent explain the mutual understanding and bond of sympathy existing between the Ifes, Ekitis, and allied families as remnants
of the largely diluted aboriginal elements still having many things in common, and their natural antipathy — more or less — to the Oyos or Yorubas Proper.

and:

The Ekitis are among the aboriginal elements of the country absorbed by the invaders from the East. The term Ekiti denotes a Mound, and is derived from the rugged mountainous feature of the country.

http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofyorubas00john/historyofyorubas00john_djvu.txt

So like I said, these claims of indigeneity don't make sense, unless you want to do some sort of genetic testing to figure out how people migrated and such. I suspect if you did such testing, you probably wouldn't be able to see much of a difference between Yoruba and Ijaw.

^-- I've no clue what other regions should do, but I know what mine should do. Namely, get power up and running, continue building infrastructure through PPPs, focus on education, agriculture, trade, and technology. Other regions should do what works best for them; I'm not as familiar with their own strengths.

The book is great, yes. Yoruba history is so exciting and interesting. But very sad sometimes.

I sort of want to use it as source for a science fiction novel, lol. If you take the basic stories, expound on them and set them in space, it would be such a winner.

Orson Scott Card (a Mormon author) did something similar with the Book of Mormon. It was only afterwards that I found out that it was his reinterpretation/rendition of a religious text.

If you did this with Yoruba history (and were a good writer), you could probably get a NY Times best seller.

Shango, Oduduwa, Moremi, Afonja, the series of wicked Yoruba kings, the various Yoruba wars, the founding of Ibadan. . .

Really some great stuff. Too bad I'm not a writer.

okeyxyz:
A man who replaces his dog with a monkey, is it not still an animal that sits around your house?

whoever u replace one wit, the same espionage still takes place. one's got to protect his multi-billion dollar interests be it americans, russians, chinese, etc.

Main thing though is to play them off against each other. I'd much rather have 5 enemies in my house who all are wary of each other than 5 enemies in my house who are all brothers.

ROSSIKE:
Meanwhile, despite our learning of these revelations, I can guarantee you that if Shell were to advertise for a 100 vacancies to be filled, they'd be flooded by thousands of applications.  

Of course. Money is money. But the government needs to imo actively almost discriminate against Shell and Western oil companies. What value do they add? They are replaceable. Any other country can do their job. There are many qualified oil extracting partners. Why are we so benevolent and kind to choose Shell?

Beaf:
@amazonia
One love!

Dude, when someone makes a statement, why don't you go check it out? Do some googling around, I really feel that the question of Nigerian and Ijo anthropology is too elementary to argue about.

I googled, examined several references, and found nothing that answers those questions I asked. I asked very specific questions; if you know the answers, say so. If not, then say that too.

As for what you said about recording history in detail without having writing systems. . . Who fed you that rubbish? I will tell you a little secret to investigate; some of what the "unseeing" call African art is nothing of the sort, some of the markings you see are not mere decorations. If you are inquisitive, this little thing I have told you will really open your eyes and take you on a journey of discovery.

Err, what the hell is this? Say something specific that can be referenced. If the art is secretly writing, why hasn't this been documented anywhere?

Yes, Bini people can tell you exact dates from 2000 years back.

Really? Any Bini here who can do this? I've seen NOTHING suggesting they know what happened 2K years ago, or of ANY group in Nigeria (or West Africa more generally) knowing this. I'd love to see any reference to this, if someone has one.

This is a lot of material to digest. I did not suspect that so much of the Wikileaks content would be about Nigeria.

I'm also with Beaf on this. That released transcript makes him look like a hero and patriot, imo.

^--- To borrow from Gowon:

"To banish Shell from the Nigerian sun is a task that must be done."

Seriously, who is a worse enemy of the people of Nigeria, the Nigerian gov't or Shell?

What sort of arrogance is it to spy on a nation, brag that you have spies EVERYWHERE, and be negotiating privately with the US government against the interests of Nigeria?

violent:
Is our President a Muppet or something relatively close?. . .or is he just suffering from a Jonathan-Peace syndrome marked by poor judgement and a defected ability to think logically before talking?. . clearly we aren't being led by a man with self confidence and assurance in his own abilities, if he doesn't believe in himself, why should we believe in him?

Heh, better that than an arrogant dude who overestimates his capabilities. I don't mind a humble leader. He knows that he was just a wall ornament, but hopes to do better than that.

I prefer that sort of attitude to that of an arrogant buffoon who thinks too much of himself.

ShangoThor:
Nigeria has no sovereignty and our alleged state of independence is a falsehood, a massive illusion. Multinationals rule the roost, and this has been proven time and time again. Every Nigerian Administration has it’s price, and there are no shortage of sell out’s (enemies within) or takers amongst the elite

Probably true. I still don't understand why we give Shell so much leway and influence in this country. We are the ones selling them oil and gas, they are not doing us any favors. So why give them that much power? Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba, Iran, India all have capable oil and gas businesses, no? Why not work with countries like that going forward? At the very least to reduce the influence of Shell.

Like, how is Shell negotiating deals and swapping information with the US about Nigeria? Like they are the of the country, lol? It is pretty sad.

Beaf:
Stop being a donkey. Every intelligent person knows about Odili. If you crack your head, the other name will pop out. Olodo!

Who is the other guy? I'm not on the ground and only have recently started following naija politics/new closely, so wouldn't know.

Regarding indigeneity, who then lived on Yoruba land before the Yorubas? For you to make this assertion of indigeneity, then you must discuss who lived there before they did, correct?

Same with Hausa, Igbo, Gwari, Nupe, etc.

And you must also demonstrate that there were no inhabitants of Ijaw land before the Ijaw. I highly doubt that Nigeria was unpopulated 10k years ago, so are you saying Ijaw (or proto Ijaw) have been inhabiting the Delta since that time? If so, then support this with some sort of evidence, please.

msaalli:
Indeed it is wonderful to realize that Abdulsalami Abubakar and indeed, the ex-COAS Dambazau were two of the good guys of the whole Yar'Adua episode. Jonathan was also shown to either be spineless or overtly cautious. But i think the more explosive cables would be the ones around the periods when there were coups.

It was a very dicey situation, man. I would have been very cautious too. If he had been bolder, he would have invited assassination or a coup. Think about how poorly a guy like Ironsi managed the situation in his time, and how it led to disaster for Nigeria.

There is nothing wrong with caution.

Beaf:
That is pretty easy to sort. I will always believe the one who gives me exact dates for events thousands of years in the past, and I mean exact dates. I will also believe those who can provide me with vivid detail, exact locations, illnesses, days of the week etc when events occurred in history. In the same vein, I will dismiss any tales of people falling from the sky as a fairytale.

Err, the sky story is different from the Eastern origin one. Anthropologists I believe have studied this issue and believe the Eastern hypothesis for Oduduwa, if I'm not mistaken. Binis seems to believe that "East" means Benin, while a lot of others instead believe it means somewhere in the Middle East or Sudan.

In any case, it seems implausible that any source is going to provide exact details about something that happened so far ago. At the end of the day, it is just stories handed down from generation to the next.

"Who born who" is very easy to find out. Funny thing is that the Ijo people recount a story that is almost an exact match to the Benin.

I don't see how this is evidence of the accuracy of either story, one way or another.

Lets be reminded that the Ijo are Nigeria's only indigenous people (they know all who have come and gone).

What does this even mean? How does one determine who was indigenous and who was not? What is the threshold of time, for example? 500, 1k, 10K years? And how does the very likely numerous waves of immigations and conquest of Nigeria (e.g., Oduduwa over the group of people he founded, the Hausa origin tales, etc) jibe with indigeneity? This seems quite nebulous.

They are the only ethnicity I know with a supremely detailed grasp of history like the Edo.
"Who born who" no hard at all!

A detailed grasp of history, without a writing system? Haba! Let us then ask the Native Americans about what North America was like 500AD, rather than using archeology and science to understand the situation at that time 

After all, they too are indigenousness and no doubt fully recall that time period.