₦airaland Forum

4 Play:
HIV infections tend to happen a lot in long term relationships because one party strays. Because the relationship is long term, there is no condom use. Many Nigerians maintain concurrent relationships(multiple partners over extended periods) which aid the infection's spread.

Yep. What should be a refuge (having sex with your wife/husband w/o a condom) is instead risky 

You'd think that these folks would think to themselves, "Gee, even though I'm cheating on my wife/husband with this ashawo, it is probably a good idea to use a condom."

@Rossike: Great post.

Very interesting stuff. Also, Abdulsalami is a good guy.

netotse:
this thread is moving too fast for me to keep up. . .lol

@dapobear
http://www.aes.com/aes/index?page=country&cat=NG

i dont think LASG owns AES. . .

Indeed, they don't. But it was a PPP, if I'm not mistaken.

@debosky
you forgot to add gas infrastructure costs to the equation, dont know how much it'll come to after that.

Also, gas isn't a problem anymore(for now). . .the gas masterplan takes care of all that, for now, there's enough gas supply to the stations, heck there was an upgrade of Utorogu a while back. As per pricing,  i read somewhere it costs arnd $1 per scf(not sure about the unit though) in naija, i think the international price is somewhere between 2 and 3 dollars can you confirm that?

Actually, this is something I wonder about. How much does it cost to buy natural gas in Nigeria? I know it is subsisized, but how much does it cost?

BTW, it looks like the international price is roughly $4 or $5 for 1000 SCF (http://www.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm). Seems that the price fluctuates a lot, though. This is for pipeline gas, not LNG, which seems to be roughly twice as much.

I'd be curious to see what the price in Nigeria is. Anyone know?

buzugee:
this is an argument between you and yourself. trying to include the rest of the world in it is preposterous. trying to convince yourself that you will go is all well and good considering you are nigerian and rich (if you can afford it ). the question is how many people like you will it take to keep this place 'functioning' and how many people are out there like you ? (very miniscule ). you gotta remember now that nigeria is not a 'user-friendly country'

I am not at all rich, dude. I'm actually relatively poorish now. But I know what the market rate of my services will be in 1.5 years or so when I finish graduate school. If I can find a job in Nigeria that can pay something close to this market rate, I'll be happy to move back. If not, then I'll investigate starting my own company to earn something close to this #. And I think there are lots of Nigerians abroad who are in a similar position, who would like to move back to Nigeria if they could, but aren't interested in running a loud generator all day, moving from very nice cities/suburbs to the generally subpar infrastructure in Nigeria.

Blazay:
Only with privatization will productivity be improved due to stiff competition.

No. There is no competition between supplier of electricity; if you are dissatisfied with whoever provides electricity to your house, then it isn't as if you can find someone else to do the job. It is effectively a local monopoly.

The main point of privatizing is to to attract outside investors with lots of cash who will not mind spending the billions of dollars required to get the infrastructure up and running.

A secondary point is to remove control from the federal gov't, who will no doubt slow down progress in places like Lagos and Abuja where the power business is likely to be most profitable. The federal governments modus operandi right now seems to be to slow all the parts of the country down to molasses speeds of progress, when some parts would like to progress more rapidly.

Nobody has denied blood connections between Yoruba and Bini, though the two different sides dispute who born who.

buzugee:
like i said, you are not luring anybody back with this pie in the sky project. the only thing that will lure people back are
1, good roads
2, well policed streets, where the police are paid well, no need for bribes, they have patrol cars with sirens and a number you can call for effective service if something happens
3, 24 hr electricity with no interruptions
4, good universities
5, steady water supply

Eko Atlantic will provide most of these things. Depending on how much it costs to live there (either buy property cash down or rent) and what type of job offers (namely salary) I can get when I graduate, EA would be enough to convince me to move back to Nigeria.

There is something very important psychologically (at least for me) about living in a world-class place. If you build it in Nigeria, I will go. And I doubt I'm the only person thinking this way.

^-- Yep. Nigeria isn't oil rich at all. The ND states are (or would be if they were a separate country), but the rest of naija is not.

That is scary. Wrap it up, folks.

Abagworo:
The 2008  ANC survey reports over 300 ,000  new infections recorded and  the results of a Modes of Transmission study conducted in 2008  indicate that over 40  percent of new HIV infections occur among couples, who at the time could be considered as engaging in ‘low-risk’ sex. Although Nigeria is one of the countries said to have a stabilised  epidemic, the persistent high risk behaviour in spite of high level of  awareness particularly among young people indicates that greater  efforts are needed in order to reach the youth and young couples with  effective prevention interventions to address their specific needs and  stimulate the adoption of safer behaviours which would reduce the risk  of HIV transmission.

Even scarier 

buzugee:
lets get one thing straight. there are no 200k nigerian abroad who can afford to cash down 100,000,000 naira for a house in nigeria. this is 1 million dollars or about 800 thousand pounds. lets get that staright

Alright, you pick the # of Nigerians abroad who move back who are added to the economy. Once you do so, we can continue this example.

buzugee:
the houses they left will be bought up by nigerians trying to relocate back home from abroad. most of those in nigeria cannot afford such homes.

So let's say this is all that happens. 200k rich Nigerians move to Eko Atlantic, 200k Nigerians abroad move back into Nigeria (who on average are fairly well off themselves.)

You see how this is a good thing, adding 200k well-off Nigerians from abroad who spend lots of money to your economy, right?

buzugee:
wealthy businessmen ? nigeria is not a place you come for business if you dont initially have business there. those wealthy businessmen would have gone to sheraton or eko hotel or other places because they still have business dealings in nigeria. so the net gain to the economy is zero. nigeria is not and will never be a tourist spot. there are just too many desperate and hungry black people there for it to ever be a tourist spot. so i think my analogy is spot on. this will basically just be another location for the already rich in nigeria to relocate to. nothing more nothing less. lets just call it what it is. the 'relocation of the rich'

Even if what you say is true, that it will just be a bunch of already rich people in Nigeria relocating, what about the homes they have left? Doesn't this alleviate housing pressures elsewhere?

Anyway, I disagree with your assessment. If you can provide a world-class city in Nigeria with all of the facilities of a place like NYC, Los Angeles, or any of the other major cities in the world, this will be attractive to lots of Nigerians abroad. Like, me personally, I'd be pretty interested in living there.

alj harem is easily one of my favorite posters on this board Dude is awesome.

audio:
Where is the electricity to power this project going to come from? Or is it Eko Atlantic Generator City?

Well, there is the Lagos-Escravos natural gas pipeline. So assuming the regulatory conditions for power generation are correct, they can source natural gas from that pipeline and generate power from it.

buzugee:
this is like the behavior of the typical black man. while living in the projects you go and buy an escalade when the 50 grand for the escalade would have improved your living conditions.

Do escalades attract wealthy businessmen, investors, and individuals who spend lots of money and thus boost the local economy? Perhaps your analogy is wrong.

johnie:
A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Strengthening some parts of the chain (fortifying EA) will only put more strain on the other parts of the chain (other parts of the shoreline). When the surge comes to EA and meets strong resistance, is bound to ripple down to the weaker portions of the shoreline putting even greater strain on these parts than before.

Funny, I learnt this from playing with sand and water as a kid

Hrm, ok. Doesn't completely make intuitive sense to me (you'd think the wave would expend more of its kinetic energy on the barrier and thus have less to spend elsewhere). But I'll take your word for it.

The MYTO is NOT the issue, you need stable price signals going years into the future so you can do reasonable profit predictions and NPV calculations on a proposed investment.

You can’t simply move tariffs in one go or completely deregulate the market, because that will cause distortions in electricity provision - benefitting some and putting others at a disadvantage.

The prices need to go up, but in a predictable manner that will allow for increased investments.

The greater issue is determining the domestic gas price - if this price competitive, then IOCs will be more inclined to supply domestic power generation instead of seeking only to export.

Once that is settled, you can then set the MYTO working on the basis that gas/fuel costs make up say 40% of electricity costs and then set the tariffs accordingly.

So my question for you is this. Lagos has an offshore IPP that they have which generates 7% of Nigeria's electricity. They'd love to:
a) expand this
b) and use this for themselves, rather than sending it to the national grid
c) charging fair prices for the energy

At least, this is the inference I've made from reading their powerpoint slide. And they blame the regulatory environment, namely MYTO for this situation. Now, am I wrongly blaming MYTO for Lagos State's predicament?

Secondly, I don’t agree with the $100bn required to generate 40,000 MW.

Right now a 1,000MW CCGT costs ~£500m to build, so 40 of those will cost £20bn.

Add on another £10bn for transmission and distribution facilities and you have a total of £30bn, which comes out at roughly $45bn for 40,000 MW and not 100bn.

I see. I googled around for some recent projects:

1) http://www.powergenworldwide.com/index/display/articledisplay/3020001089/articles/powergenworldwide/gas-generation/combined-cycle/2010/07/siemens_-poweo_to.html (£500 million for 413 MW => £48.5 billion for 20 MW)
2) http://www.eib.org/projects/pipeline/2008/20080693.htm (£407 million for 445 MW => £36.6 billion for 20MW)

Project #1 (in France) is more recent than #2 (Ireland.) So I think the base cost might be substantially more than this £30 billion you mention.

Or do you know of recent projects where this was built more cheaply?

@Pukkah: Custom & politics in urban Africa: a study of Hausa migrants in Yoruba towns, page 30:
http://books.google.com/books?id=orO0DRiPvGMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Custom+%26+politics+in+urban+Africa&hl=en&ei=LGj_TNS4IoGCsQPzu6GwCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Basically, some emancipated Hausa slaves were sort of caught culturally between Hausa and Yoruba. Claimed to be Hausa to the Hausa of Sabo (the Hausa district in Ibadan) and claim to be Yoruba to the Yoruba in Ibadan. Eventually gravitated towards the latter.

This reminded me of the Sarakis 

Anyway, it isn't really a big deal, Yoruba probably aren't some sort of racially pure group. My guess is that we are a mix of a lot of things. And will continue to mix over time. The culture is a lot more important than genetics, to me

Jarus:
Now I see our arguments converging.

Both I'm not from Ilorin, I'm from Offa, which is 100% Yoruba, as is the case with all other communities in Kwara South.

Whoops, sorry for confusing Offa and Owu, lol.

Ilorin is not the only town in Kwara, although it is by far the largest and most important.

It is only Ilorin that has a debatable ethnicity, Kwara South is indisputably Yoruba. The Nupes, Barubas of Kwara North are not in any way Yoruba. The Kwara central and Ilorin is mixed, but largely Yoruba too. So I'm not sure a Nupe man(they have also produced governor - Shaaba Lafiaji 1991-1992) or a Baruba man(Bio, current sporst minister, Farooq Kperog, NVS writer are Baruba) will agree with you that Kwara is a Yoruba state. But given the fact that other tha the SW states, no state is 100% a single tribe in Nigeria, we can loosely call Kwara by the majority tribe, a Yoruba state.
Being quite conversant with Kwara, your guess is not exactly correct.

I see, thanks for clarifying.

This is the mindset:
KWARA SOUTH(purely Yoruba): Prefer SW
KWARA NORTH(Nupe, Baruba etc): Prefer NC
KWARA CENTRAL(debatable history, between Yoruba nd Fulani): Almost 50-50 preference. Some will tell you they are not Yoruba but Fulani even if his/her name is Bukola or Toyin and can't speak a single word in Hausa, not to talk of Fulbe. Some others wil tell you they are Yoruba. But politically, majority prefer North.

I see. But the central alignment with North is probably mostly Saraki's influence, no? And how does it cut across generations? Youth versus middle-aged versus elderly folk?

Honestly, it would be useful for everyone involved if you could discuss these issues. I'm not the only one who wants to know. Share your expertise; any embarrassment I get from the result won't kill me

Katsumoto:
Afonja had an issue with Alaafin Aole and sent a calabash to the Alaafin signifying that he no longer respected his rule. In 1817, Afonja then invited a muslim scholar, Alimi, to Ilorin ostensibly to fortify himself with more charms. At this point, even with Ilorin, an out post town of the Oyo empire, isolated from the rest the rest of the empire, the Fulani did not attack Ilorin. In 1823, Alimi died and Abdulsalam became his successor. Abdusalam then sent for the Caliphate flag and Ilorin came under the Emirate of Gwandu. There was no armed rebellion in Ilorin

Read Samuel Johnson's 'History of the Yorubas' and a book by Professor Akin-jogbin; I can't remember the title now.

Ah, I'm not claiming that there was armed rebellion WITHIN Ilorin. Just discussing some of the demographics of Afonja's troops:

Opele was the only powerful chief Afonja respected and having now no rival he resolved upon a scheme to reduce the provinces under his own sway, leaving the capital severely alone in complete isolation. He made no attempt on Oyo, had no aspiration after the throne knowing that was impossible of attainment ; it was sufficient tor him that the King was powerless to check his ambition. In order to strengthen his hands in the enterprise he was about to undertake, he invited a Fulah Moslem Priest named Alimi to Ilorin to act as his priest. Alimi in responding to his call came with his Hausa slaves and made Ilorin his home. These Hausa slaves Afonja found to be useful as soldiers. He also invited to Ilorin a rich and powerful Yoruba friend at Kurwo named
Solagberu, who quartered himself at the outskirts of the town.

All the Hausa slaves in the adjacent towns hitherto employed as barbers, rope-makers, and cowherds, now deserted their masters and flocked to Ilorin under the standard of Afonja the Kakanfo, and were protected against their masters.

(As an aside, I also found some historical reports on JSTOR of some of these titled families in Kwara who are descendants of these Hausa slaves, but instead claim to have Fulani ancestry.)

Haba! So then tell me how much the water level will rise locally, o master engineer? And how will it affect the local shoreline? No doubt you've already calculated the "differential effects", eh? Or are you purely speculating?

And you know more than the Dutch experts they hired when doing this project? Who did extensive simulations, and have been reclaiming land from the ocean for literally hundreds of years?

Please, teach us. I'll email a copy of your teachings to them so they can learn and fix their no doubt poorly designed reclamation projects in the Netherlands, too 

dappssee:
Dumb assessment! Simple Secondary School Physics should tell you that an object will displace its own volume of water. The reclaimed land will certainly make the water levels rise

The volume of water being displaced will make the entire Atlantic Ocean rise, yes, lol. Hrm, I guess you could calculate how many thousandths of a nanometers (or perhaps millionths? Or heck, trillionths is probably the right scale?) it would cause the Atlantic to rise. Might be an interesting calculation 

Jarus:
@ Ileke,
I agree we share cultural affinity with SW than North, at least those of us Yoruba, who are the majority. Many a time, I mistakenly refer to myself as being form the SW sef.
The Nupe, Baruten people however are more like Hausa/Fulani, culturally.

Jarus, many of the people you call Yoruba now in Kwara, their ancestors were not. I'm sure you are familiar with the history of Ilorin and Afonja's rebellion. A lot of his forces were runaway Hausa slaves, for example. Those guys eventually forgot Hausa, intermarried (or quite possibly did NOT intermarry!), and today speak Yoruba. A similar process happened in Ibadan, actually (there is an interesting book I read recently on google books describing this process.)
So Yoruba ancestry/identity/whatever is quite fluid.

@ Dapobear, a few questions:
- During the northern and southern protectorate era, where was present day Kwara?
- During the regional system era, where was the present day Kwara classified?

North, North.

It is when we trace back history to pre-20th century that we begin to trace the history of the Yoruba Kwara and Fulani Kwara separately.The Yoruba from Oyo, the Fulani from Sokoto, and that's very complicated. I personally hold the opinion that Ilorin is a mixture of Yoruba and Fulani, but I'm tired of debating this issue. The descendants of Alimi are Fulani, and the descendants of Afonja are Yoruba. Who, among the two, actually owns Ilorin? Both, my take. Both of them were migrants, Afonja migrating from Oyo and Alimi from Sokoto. But who rules Ilorin? The Fulani has been dominating.

Jarus, how many pure Fulani are there even still in Kwara? Abdulsalam (Alimi's son and heir), his mother was Yoruba. So even your current Emir is a least 50% Yoruba. You sort of see what I'm saying?

Look, China was conquered in the past by foreign invaders. Who were eventually adopted Chinese culture and were absorbed into it. From my observations, this is what has happened in Kwara. If there were tons and tons of pure Fulani running around, and your Emir himself was a pure Fulani, then I might be able to concede that Ilorin is a Fulani town. But there is no way that is the case. Even the "Fulani" in Ilorin are very likely genetically 50%+ Yoruba.

So in my mind, Ilorin is a Yoruba town, and Kwara sef a Yoruba state. I suspect if Kwarans ever have to choose one day between North and SW, they will choose the latter. But this is again just my guess.

The political classification began in the early 20th century. That doesn't mean we are losing our Yoruba history. Ethnicity cannot be changed. It's natural. Political classification can be changed. Today a government can come and reclassify Yoruba part of Kwara to SW and the other tribes to NC. But nobody can come and say we are no longer Yoruba or that our Nupe brothers are no longer Nupe etc.

Ultimately, this is sort of a hearts and minds thing, not a political classification thing. I grew up in Maryland in the US. At one point it was considered a Southern state. Nowadays, it is not, mostly because the inhabitants of the state view themselves as having more in common with the idealogical North (Democratic Party, liberalism, etc) of the country rather than the South (Republican Party, conservatism, Evangelical Christianity, etc).

Anyway, I want to see this mental realignment occur one day in Kwara. I actually know that southern Kwara (I guess Owu?) for historical reasons has always identified with the SW. But I think this will happen more generally, once guys like Saraki are booted out of power.

^-- Part of the point of this is to prevent VI from being consumed by the ocean. The reclaimed land and the big barrier protecting it from the ocean also protect VI.

Of course, since the land is being reclaimed and restored to the condition it was in the late 1800s/early 1900s, we may as well make use of it. Hence EA.

@1025: Right now, electricity from PHCN is sold at 1/2 of the cost it costs to produce. Of course, there is never enough electricity, since nobody wants to sell someone for less than it costs (would you like to sell pounded yam at half the cost it costs you to farm it, for example? Obviously not.)

So my question for you is, would you like to keep buying this 1/2 price electricity (roughly 6 Naira per KWh) from the PHCN, but for only 6 hours a day? Or pay slightly above the cost to produce it (say 15 Naira per KWh), and have it guaranteed for 24 hours a day? Note that if you stay with PHCN and keep using your generator, you are likely paying 25 KWH or something similar by using your gen. Not to mention maintenance costs, etc, etc.

Jarus:
What is today Kwara has always been classified as North since 1914. During the provincial era pre-independence, Ilorin province(now Kwara and Kogi) was undr Northern region. During the regional system, Kwara was part of Northern region. Till today, Kwara is still North. Or can you count the 19 Northern states for me?

Whether a place is North or South is not a natural classification like ethnicity. A mistake, so to speak, was made in 1914 and Ilorin province was classified as North, and till today, it still is. Taking it to South will involve official proclamation and boundary adjustment.

It doesn't appear that Kwara was officially classified as part of the "North" anywhere in the constitution, though. In fact, neither exists in that document, at least from my quick search.

Before 1914, there was a Northern and Southern protectorate. But those no longer exist. Just states.

johnie:
I have also wondered what the environmental impact of this project would be on settlements further down the coastline specifically along the Lekki corridor.

With the proposed embankment, Victoria Island should be protected from sea surge and other similar threats but won't this result in more frequent and more significant impact of surges to the lekki peninsular.  If due care is not taken, the peninsular could be reduced to a string of islets or atolls.

Why would this happen? The waves will crash on EA's barrier as usual, but rather than carrying away sand and dirt, they'll carry away nothing. Why would this result in more surges elsewhere?

I'm not some sort of ocean scientist, but it doesn't make sense to me why this would happen. You build a barrier in one place for the ocean to crash on, and it causes more activity elsewhere? Seems kind of weird, no?

Sky Blue:
I seriously doubt that figure. I read the source you quoted. Papers should stop pulling figures from thin air. Yes It will be expensive and in the billions of dollars to get 40000mw, but nowhere near 100billion dollars.

Nah, looks pretty legit (minus my typo of MWH instead of MW.) Coal and natural gas prices have soared it appears, bumping up the price to like $2-3k per KW:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/business/worldbusiness/10energy.html?_r=1

So $2 or $3 per watt, 40K MW, , roughly $100 billion seems reasonable.

I strongly dislike this 10 year plan the article has in mind, that is too pessimistic and slow.

If you empower the state of Lagos to provide electricity for itself and charge market rates, I think they can do it in 3 or 4 years. They already have an IPP project (http://www.aes.com/aes/index?page=country&cat=NG) that generates 270 MW through 9 gas-power barges (7% of the nation's supply.)

Not quite clear how much this can be scaled up (perhaps for technical reasons one cannot go from 9 barges to 40 or 50 barges), but at least in theory I really think that Lagos could supply all of its own power needs (other states might have difficulty getting foreign investors to supply the billions in capital required, Lagos on the other hand doesn't have this type of problem.)

That is, assuming that Lagos could charge its citizens fair value (or slightly above) for the electricity generation. Unfortunately, due to moronic federal government policies, Lagos (or any other state) is not allowed to do this. . .

This MYTO (multi year tariff order) seems to be 95% of the problem:

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5534749-146/story.csp

Basically, the price of electricity is capped at something ridiculously cheap like 4.3 cents (6.31 Naira) per KWh, and is only allowed to increase slowly over time.

The base cost to produce electricity is likely double or triple that amount, probably something like 15 Naira per KWh. This seems to be the major reason there is no power in the country. Whenever a good or service is sold at less than cost, there will always be a shortage.

Independent Power Projects, like the one Lagos did, for some reason they have to sell their power to the national grid rather than using it themselves. I guess they are forced to sell to the grid at this price which is cheaper than production cost.

I still think that electricity needs to be privatized. But even more than that, MYTO needs to be gotten rid of, ASAP. That way, selling electricity in Nigeria can be profitable (or at least you can break even.)

If Lagos State for example didn't have to follow MYTO and could set their own price for electricity, there will be 24 hour electricity in the state very rapidly. They could just expand their existing IPP project to cover the needs of their state. Their IPP is based on natural gas, so you could buy natural gas from the Niger Delta (or from overseas, if the militants start blowing up stuff.) The Lagos State government could then sell the electricity effectively at cost to its citizens, knowing that this would boost the economy.

Why is the Nigerian gov't so incompetent?!?!

homerac7:
DapoBear, take am easy o! Thought I Ws disgusted by d guys senseless talk until I saw rave. Pele o! Dt shows how selfish and vile our people r, oyinbo man is not our problem but our very evil minded selves.

I apologize for cursing and edited my initial post.

The problem is the guy is a slowpoke. Or doesn't do research, have common sense. If electricity is not working and has never worked while under government management, why should anyone believe that the gov't continuing to run it will bring about progress?