₦airaland Forum

maximunimpact:
Oyedepo the chairmsn of religious wing of PDP

How exactly ? Please state facts and educate a brother.

Cheap Votes and Political Olympics - Guardian Editorial
By Feyi Fawehinmi
If you can find the time this year, I ask you to do something – detach yourself from Nigerian politics for a while and just observe all that is going on from a safe distance. With just over a year to elections, whether or not you go near politics, politics will come near you. It is going to be everywhere – on television, radio, social media, beer parlours and newspaper vendor stands. Nigerian politicians might not understand democracy or basic governance but they are very good at playing politics as a game.

But, all things being equal, Nigeria remains a going concern. As bad as things are, the country is not about to blow up and all the citizens of the country asked to go somewhere else. Bad governance can last for a very long time while a country remains – Guatemala has not really known good governance for 400 years and counting. So, if Nigeria can remain as it is for a long time, there is nothing to lose by taking a long-term view of the country – at least longer than the four-year political cycle made up of 1.5 years of actual work and 2.5 years of politicking. Once you manage to detach yourself from the political fever, even if only briefly, you start to see how depressing the situation is. Nigeria is stuck in a bad cycle of politics without democracy.

Believe it or not, politics can be a noble thing. America has been a democracy since 1776 when it became an independent nation. In that time it has grown to be the most powerful nation on earth with a machine of an economy and very rich citizens. Even if its politicians have gotten many things wrong, they have done many things right. While democracy is not the only way many countries have developed, it is not really an obstacle to economic development once you widen the sample of countries beyond Singapore to include Sweden, for example.

But what is this thing we have in Nigeria? God only knows. It took Britain about 100 years to arrive at universal suffrage very slowly. Each reform added a new class of voters, using different criteria, until finally everyone could vote. Nigeria started off with everyone having the right to vote. Nothing says this is automatically a bad thing – the benefit of hindsight is that it allows you skip some unnecessary steps that someone else went through. But Nigerian politicians have found a way to short circuit the system. There is really nothing mysterious about poverty – it is the default state of human beings. If nothing is done, poverty will maintain its hold on people and spread from generation to generation. But for cynical politicians, poverty has the benefit of reducing the market price of a vote. You cannot buy a vote for N3,000 in America, but you can definitely buy one in Nigeria for that price. A typical Nigerian politician wants to buy votes in bulk so all that is required for the price of votes to come down, is for the politicians to do nothing. As poverty increases, the cost of a vote comes down in real terms once you account for inflation.

Nigeria is in big trouble. This fundamental problem of a political system that is incentivised to cheapen votes as much as possible is not going to go away by itself anytime soon. The politicians who have been entrusted with leading the country have discovered that they have struck gold with an incredibly efficient way of manufacturing millions of cheap new votes every year. And what about the voters? Well, if you have been born into this system and grew up in it, it is extremely difficult to conceive of better. Since there is only one person buying votes, the voters are in no position to bargain for long – they are simply price takers.

As the countdown to next year’s political olympics begins in earnest, it is important to pause and reflect on what exactly Nigerian politics does as against what it is supposed to do. Of what use is politics if it cannot repair the nation’s busiest road for more than a decade? Nigeria is going to be around beyond 2019. Maybe it’s time to start thinking and planning accordingly. Happy new year.


https://guardian.ng/politics/cheap-votes-and-political-olympics/

What was he thinking before ?

Statsocial:
Nice. Would also be a nice tourist center....

I oppose this . . . . .

Yeligray:
Is building the worship center not the work of their hands?

If the building project fund was utilized for something that serves everybody irrespective of their religion it would av employed hands as well. I don't support cornering the taxes of non-believers to build churches.

Yeligray:
they don't need your support or approvalIs your president not providing jobs for you?.. People do things for what they believe in and it works for them. You believed in buhari and you have results.. Why can't they believe in their God and have their own results.


I have always wondered why God blesses Akwa Ibom State so much and now, i have the answer. No one serves the lord or does something for God without being blessed.

Religion is personal thing. Is the state going to build a mosque also ?

I don't support this.

Has anyone noticed that the pattern of video releases by BH is in sync with the peak of propagandas that are always silencing other sensitive issues like herdsmen clash . . .
I really hope I am wrong this time.

The pattern of video releases by BH is in sync with the peak of propagandas aimed at silencing other sensitive issues like herdsmen clash . . .
I really hope I am wrong this time.

Good. I hope boko isn't haram any longer in that Adamawa.

fergie001:
This man looks stupid,talks stupidly,reasons stupidly,but do not be deceived this Randy fellow is stupid.

Oga,you have no business in Benue,your incompetent Oga sent you for to save-face,
A day of reckoning shall come......

Could you have imagined that his statements will depend on what the Fulanis/Tiv people - one of the warring factions - told him in a meeting? We are in Aboki soup in this country.

Wizmike111:

Nonetheless, while briefing the NASS joint committee on Petroleum Resources, on 4th January 2018, the Minister also suggested that “non performance of refineries” was due to factors, which include fraud and a lack of holistic maintenance programme.

Regrettably, however, the Minister did not report what steps were taken to punish the perpetrators of fraud or to indeed, arrest the degree of fraud in these public refineries, which have clearly gulped more money on basic ‘Turn Around Maintenance’ than is probably required to build more efficient new facilities.

Our problem isn't really non-performance of the current refineries but sabotage. With $40B in the foreign exchange reserve account govt can afford to use $12B of it to build a replica of Dangote's 650,000 bpd refinery and still have $28B in reserves. This an asset that will generate high paying jobs/employment and yeild more profit for the FG.
The nation was having less than $28B in the reservers about a year ago and the economy didn't crash.

SalamRushdie:
Henry Boyo is my favourite economist in Nigeria but unfortunately govt after govt have refused to tap into his vast knowledge and solutions that can stabilize our economy

The people in power understand these things but are too focused on regional politics. They are thinking of building power plants in and gas pipelines to Kano, Kaduna & Abuja through NNPC instead learning from Dangote refinery and sit up.

Did he met with them before fishing out don wanny, karowei, kanu, and the Arepo boys in Lagos/Ogun ?
Sounds like he is preparing soft landing for criminal elements again.

Paperwhite:
APC appointees are all liars that constantly say and denied @ same time.Meanwhile the marauding & killer herdsmen should relocate to Sambisa forest.

Save for aunty Kemi and a few others men, the APC appointees are largely cocky fellas always testing the waters with dumb statements before imposing clueless ideas on the populace.

This man is proving to be one hell of a Buhari & core northern henchman.
He was the same man who suggested that farmers should pay for special security arrangement when the herdsmens killing in edo state and the SE was at its peak some 2 years ago.

Hmmm . . . What aspect of the cultism did he get his gun for ?

Statsocial:
So they said for ppl who want to study Agric in Landmark-still they aren't so plenty. Funny enough Music can be more valuable than some over celebrated nonsense courses they we still do.

Can music cure the poverty or health or even infrastructural problems bedeviling Africa?
Music isn't a bad idea on its own but Agric is a need while music is just a want. You hardly see people do crime so they can have music but food/shelter/health, that tell us something.

Rebuilding an army that, from many indications, is pro-Fulani/core north to me is a step backward for those who are already being oppressed.
Look at the BH saga and how they were raiding the NA's weapon cache freely. Now imagine such army being strengthened without the saboteurs being straightened first.

They borrow and loot for themselves leaving the innocent populace to face the music of debt repayment.

Petty of you OP. Get out.

sarrki:
PDP are very much in the know

They are criminals

So APC is just as clueless as the one they love to blame ?
Your confusion na heavy duty . . . .

Livestock like chicken, pig, goats, turkey right ?
The parasitic thinking pattern is obvious.

ogbeniolola:
Ortom is a failed governor and he is deploying divisive tactics to attract public sympathy to his government.....His anti-grazing law is meant to malign the fulanis who have coexisted with the tivs and idomas in benue for many years and why would they now take up arms against anyone?

Because Ortom has failed to notch up the infrastructural level of the state and deliver on his electoral promise, he came up with a useless law to create disunity in the state; does it mean it's only fulani people that engage in cattle business and there are no farmers amongst them? And does it mean there are no herdmen among tiv and idoma people?...so what's his problem with Fulani-herdsmen when indeed we also have tiv-herdsmen and idoma-herdsmen?

Stop the silly rant, Grazing has moved beyond illiteracy level all over the globe. The fact remains that Fulanis are troublemakers. If not, they wont be killing people in the south where they havent co-existed for years.

Let them start ranching. The same parasitic mentality that is making us adopt federal character to accommodate uneducated folks is the same mentality you want us to keep replicating 60 years after discovery of oil and after close to a trillion dollar earnings. Grow up and stop playing silly politics online.

Impressed already and would love to see more.

Jakumo:
Sadly Mr. Kanu sleeps with the fishes now. He flew too close to the sun, and like Icarus of ancient Greek mythology, his wings held on with wax, melted due to the sun's heat, allowing gravity to direct the rest of his short and swift final flight down to God's green Earth.

Let the fate of Mr. Kanu, at the hands of federal storm troopers, serve as a sober cautionary tale to all those who imagine that African democracies are identical with the more civilized variants practiced in the Western nations of Europe and North America.

As late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin reportedly replied when asked if freedom of speech was assured by his tyrannical, bloodthirsty government, "Freedom of speech is guaranteed, however freedom AFTER speech is not assured."

If you are foolhardy enough to insult a head of state, at least preserve your life by doing so as a resident of London, Oslo or Amsterdam, because exercising that degree of freedom to dis the big boss in Africa, will greatly increase the odds of your also sleeping with the fishes forever more.

what are you smoking man . . . You are Quetin Tarantino of Nairaland.

jesusloveyou55:
but idiotic pigs of Biafra said they are from Israel

fyi, i am not biafra or even igbo. Next . . .

Go school una no gree . . . Lol . . . 2 million cows. Next please ! ! !

Why give out contract to Isreal. Jonathan used SA against BH and people kicked against it. Why Isreal now?

Time to suppress fulani herdsmen news . . .

Did southerner kill Fulanis too ? If no, why are they killing southerners ? And if the did, where the dead bodies.