₦airaland Forum

For me, the ideal location has been my challenge (because i know the equipments & appliances will be procured bit by bit). I desire an outfit that is very professional in outlook, thus i went scouting the govt secretariats in town (PHC)- Fed, State and Local council secretariats. They all had adopted a policy to drive out such businesses out of their premises, on the grounds of security. I never really fancied campuses (i checked out RSUST). my reason being that it will render my business to a seasonal one (you kno, no business if school is on break or strike).
The need to get busy with a business is simply great, and becos buying and selling isnt what i'm good at, i am quite comfortable with the biz centre save for this surmountable challenge.


Don't forget to also help to register American visa lottery applicant, waec, jamb, neco and the rest candidates.
great idea also, thanks.

am interested in running a document processing business (business centre). have been for a long time now. problem is, i get discouraging feedback from people that i shouldnt: too capital intensive and no good profit. please can you say something about it. thanks.

My journey was stopped for over 2hrs on the east-west road on my way to warri by 7.30am this morning. It was a sorry site, raw flesh every where and most completely burnt. But the number was not up to a hundred persons though. The driver of the tanker warned those scooping fuel to leave the seen cos fire may erupt. Not one person listened to him. Explosion was caused by motorcycles close to the accident seen.

An indian once said, 'You can literally pick money on the streets of Nigeria, but your people are too lazy to see it'. I'll definately encourage our diasporans brothers to come back home an establish enterpirses for the good of the society and for a better life for themselves, because we've the market, Remember nigerian are too lazy to look for better solution. So they always flock around those that can help them out. We only know how to complain and i've seen it alot on this forum.

I've asked myself these question alot of times, Is this true about me? It's on record that most african don't think, we easily look for blame instead of looking for solution to our problems

This quite a long read, but the first few paragraphs will give you an idea if you want to read all

They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.

“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”

Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.

“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.

I told him mine with a precautious smile.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Zambia.”

“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s country.”

“Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”

“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected King Cobra as your president.”

My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.

“I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other highly intelligent Zambians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”

“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.

“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is incorruptible. He is …”

He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”

Quett Masire’s name popped up.

“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”

At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.

“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.

From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.

“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia.”

I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.”

He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World.”

The smile vanished from my face.

“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”

“There’s no difference.”

“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they

were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”

I gladly nodded.

“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”

For a moment I was wordless.

“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”

I was thinking.

He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”

I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.

“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.

He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lusaka markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I wept. I said to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are the Zambian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”

I held my breath.

“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”

He looked me in the eye.

“And you flying to Boston and all of you Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”

I was deflated.

“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”

He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”

He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”

At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.

“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Zambia and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”

He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”

Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Zambia’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports.

Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.

But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba, Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.

I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.

“Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)

Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.

A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.

As told by Field Ruwe - a US-based Zambian media practitioner and author. He is a PhD candidate with a B.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism, and an M.A. in History

at that price a big noooo. That how much it cost for you to buy from Cotonou. Fish light camry is a better choice, but get a mechanic to check it out first and do a test drive

Kia is a good brand, but not the same Kia sold by DANA motor. Its not acceptable for 2012 Kia Rio not to have air bag, but the same Kia Rio imported from US or Europe all have air bags. The suspension system is so compromise just to make profit. I can buy a Kia but certainly not from DANA

Those old model rover are generally solid cars with good suspension. i used a 1995 model for 5 yrs, but started having issues with the electrical after 4yrs of use and couldn"t fix it cos there was no parts available. The general rule for me when it come to rover sedan vehicles are "run from them" cos very few parts are availalbe except for the newer models that use almost the same parts as Honda

i used it for 5 yrs, quite a good and solid ride. I'll recommend you buy only fairly used imported one. Started having electrical issues after 4 yrs of using it in port harcourt. Had to sell at a give away price when it stopped me on the road to work one day. The car has a solid body though but could get parts to fix the electrical problems it had.

I guess people don't have anything good to say about their country but are quick to run to another another country that her citizen has helped to build!?

I have observed a lot of Nigerians say bad and derogatory comments about this Country including our brothers in diaspora. As a people lets not call the only country we've bad cos u've no other country to call home, we can start today to make a difference in our locality. I'll begin by saying 'Nigeria is a blessed country with beautiful people and wonderful spicy food'. I've been out of this country and with all it's challenges I still love nija. Stay safe!!

Please can anybody in the house tell me how I can get the noise proof Honda petrol generator. I saw it advertise in the newspaper couple of months ago.

See you guys later

Continues

fyi

@brainwave, suprise to see this thread still alive. Good job. Will be posting Nebosh questions as much as i can upload.

Replacing your ECU with a fairly used one will not stop the problem cos you may just be replacing it with another problematic ECU. It's better to get to a reliable dealer who can get you a new ECU, not one made in the year that Toyota did the recall (2001-03). You can check this site for confirmation of the ECU you have or the attachement.
http://qcwo.com/otherdeal/Services/2001-2003-Toyota-RAV4-ECM-Repair-Service
The attachement contains the serial number of the problematic ECU for your reference.

I refer specifically to document processing services such as typesetting; photocopying; printing; laminating; binding; scanning and such related services. Might even throw in sale of stationeries in the mix.

Good day people.
I dont know if this topic have been discussed before, but i have a deep interest in starting a business centre: how much capital do i need, how lucrative is it, what things should i look i for, what is its risk level? i live in PHC.

please refer to the thread if dis have been discussed b4, so i dont bore no one.
many thanks.

I've learnt that using a Tokunbo car in naija after 3 yrs of usage is too much headache and not worth it. Our local mechanics hardly do preventive maintenance, they only fix problem they see. My present car has just gone past 4yrs and the same mechanic wear and tear problem has reared it heads.

What do u guys think? i'm abt to give it away and buy another.

will be interested in getting 2 pieces from u @ 10k each. i leave in Port Harcourt.

Good product, but your advertise price is just too high, i bought it for 10k

IOSH - If your target is an american affiliated company, Nebosh for the rest of the industry

I did try to zip but couldn't reduce the size to send via mail. yahoo size limit is 25mb. and could reduce the size enough to post on rapishare. Done trying.

@mylove4him, The best way to stay relivant in your new place of work is to find ways to improve their safety performace without affecting their production activities. and always get the buy-in of the poeple that matters to support any new initiative u want to introduce and of cos they ve to belive it's for the over-all good of the company. take care

I've the complete NEBOSH training materials and test questions i'll like to share with everyone, but the size is 1gig. any idea of how to share it, cos i can't send such size via mail.

@brainwave, kudos for keeping this forum alive. You're doing a good job. @mylove4him, congratulations to you on ur new job.
You can find out info about NEBOSH organised by Sydney Gateway by sending a mail to sydneygtwy_west@yahoo.com

Hi house, i've forgotten i made a post to this topic, this is my 7th yr as a HSE pratictional and i earned over 500k in a reputable oil company, though i started with peanut, you won't believe it, but i was after getting the experience and not the money. In HSE you've to pick an area you want to be good at before you make the decision of certification, You must choose between Health, Safety and Env't. I've been in safety all this while. NISP is a good place to start but won't take you anywhere. Nebosh is the way to go. HSE Job are regularly posted on rigzone.com Hope this helps, will check again to offer advice, see ya