₦airaland Forum

davidif:
This is the funniest thing i've ever read in my life ha ha ha.

Technical Cooperation in Africa, Dr. Sule Yakubu-Bassi, on Wednesday alled that Nigerian soldiers who participated in the ECOMOG peace operations in Liberia fathered over 250,000 children.

Nigeria and some member-states of the Economic Community of West African States contributed troops to the ECOMOG peace operations during the civil war that ravaged the West African country, beginning from 1990.

Yakubu-Bassi made the disclosure in Abuja during a meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, which is chaired by Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa.

According to the DG, the soldiers abandoned the children in Liberia when they returned to Nigeria.

He added that the children’s mothers were now worried over the development and had made series of failed attempts to trace the soldiers.

Yakubu-Bassi called on the committee and the Federal Government to intervene in the matter by re-uniting the children with their fathers in Nigeria.

“Their mothers are trying to make sure they are properly documented and so on.

“The Nigerian Embassy in Liberia is doing something about it.

”Definitely, you can’t run away from your people. These are our people; they are still young and they need to go to school and they will also need to be nurtured just like every other Nigerian,” he stated.

The DG expressed the support of his agency for the proposed Nigeria Diaspora Commission, adding that such a body would help in reducing the lack of coordination between Diaspora Nigerians and their people back home.

According to him, an estimated $17 bn was remitted home yearly by Nigerians in the Diaspora.

Some Nigerians resident in Gabon also complained to the committee that their host government was about repatriating around 210,000 Nigerians.

The leader of Nigerians in Gabon, Mr. Babatunde Yekini, said that the authorities just wanted to send the Nigerians home because of their rising numbers.

Dabiri-Erewa assured the two groups that the committee would look into their complaints by drawing the attention of the appropriate government agencies to their plight.

esto:
Hi,Richard,pls can u also sent to me?i will send a mail to your box.mine is 20th in enugu.

Former US Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, yesterday night made a prognosis of where Nigeria should be within the next fifty years, saying that the country should have a strong democracy which would deliver for the people.

But Rice, while answering questions moderated by the Chairman of THISDAY Newspapers, Mr. Nduka Obaigbena, at the THISDAY Nigeria at 50 Awards Dinner last night in Abuja, sidestepped a question requiring her to make comments on the prolonged absence of ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

She said: “I will leave this point to Nigerians. One thing that is important… I pray for your president’s recovery. I met him. I saw him to be somebody who had a real vision for Nigeria. But ultimately, the presidency is more important than the person who occupies it. In a democracy, there is the office of the presidency and the person elected to that office is the servant of the people and he is accountable to the people…

“I am certain that Nigerians would find within their democratic institutions a way to deal with the current crisis that you have; but with that said, my prayers are with your President and my prayers are with your Acting President with whom I met today (yesterday) and with all of your other leaders who must lead Nigeria through this critical time.”

The 15th THISDAY Awards ceremony held at the THISDAY Dome, Abuja, saw a number of prominent Nigerians both living and dead, as well as companies and institutions, recognised for their contributions and achievements in the polity.

Rice continued the discussion on “Nigeria: The Next 50 Years,” from where the duo of former US President, George W. Bush and former Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair left off in the afternoon during a Special Luncheon, which presaged the Awards night.
In trying to define the trajectory open to Nigeria in the next fifty years, she said while rounding off his speech which she made almost extempore that, “I come to you as a daughter of ordinary people. I come to you also as a citizen of the country that struggled to make ‘we, the people’ have meaning because, of course, when the founding fathers said ‘we, the people’ they did mean me.

“But throughout democratic institutions, solely virtually, ‘we, the people’ has come to mean more of us and the great irony is that it was the descendants of stolen sons and daughters Africa that brought America to the full realisation of what ‘we, the people’ means.

“In doing so, those descendants, impatient patriots like Martin Luther King, actually found inspirations in the liberation movements that were taking place here in Africa. They found their liberation in people who said ‘enough is enough; the time has come for freedom.’

“That inspiration then led those impatient patriots to overcome to the point that a little girl growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, during the dark time of segregation, a little girl who could not have a hamburger and lunch on the counter because of segregation and had never believed that she could be something in US, became a Secretary of State.”

Rice stated: “That same spirit led America to overcome to the point that it elected a black man to the highest office in the land.”
She then drove her point home more forcefully: “You see, I have come to believe that Nigeria at 50, Nigeria at 60, Nigeria at 70 will be a place that has achieved its potentials because I know that sometimes things that seem impossible just seem unaffordable after you have achieved them.

“If we take this anniversary, if we take as friends of Africa and Nigeria, and if you take, as Nigerians, this anniversary to reaffirm the principle that Nigerian democracy will be strong and honourable and deliver for its people, I am quite certain that we will look back and say: ‘a job well done; potentials fulfilled’.”

On the political risk in Nigeria, she said, “Well, I think that every country has some degree of political risk. Obviously, Nigeria has had its challenges in the last fifty years in terms of political stability, but I think that the world is watching, tracking the coming election very closely because Nigeria is now a democracy and Nigerians, I believe, would demand that this democracy functions in a transparent way, that the elections are transparent and that would send a strong signal to the international community to the international market, to the international investors that issues of political risks as we have tended to think about them with Nigeria are passing away.

“What do investors want? They want stable contracts; they want rule of law; they want to know that the political system would be calm, that there would not be upheavals and they want fair rules of the game in the economy and those are efforts that I think Nigerians have been working towards.

“You had good leadership. Your former Finance Minister (apparently referring to Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) was a terrific leader on these issues and I think people are going to be looking at these next elections to have affirmation and confirmation that the Nigeria democracy is on sound footing.”

Rice added: “Now, Nigeria has great wealth and it seems to me that the issue for Nigeria is how to diversify the economy so that it is not just hydrocarbons that drive the economy; that means a good environment for the development of small business and for multi-nationals.
“…So, I think that the US is very involved with the Nigerian economy and I am certain that these are programmes that will continue but the question of infrastructure and building of roads, are the hardest to do and that I think government will have to find a way on their own to do them.”

On what is new in Iraq after the invasion by the US, she said: “Well, I do not think I can tell you anything new about what we did in Iraq, but I can perhaps say something about what the Iraqis are doing themselves.

“The Middle East is badly in need of democratic examples. In the modern age, it cannot be that an entire region is essentially without democratic governments with very, very few exceptions.

“Iraq has been one of the worst tyrannies of the 21st century. That the Iraqis might be able to make their transition to democracy from their terrible tyranny that was there; but they might be able to do it in a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional society with Sunnis, Shia, Kurds and others all working together in a democratic institutions.

“That will be new in the Middle East; and, there are some signs that they are doing precisely that and they have a long way to go and we are all holding our breath for the elections in March, that they will be open and fair and that all people would be represented.

“But when I look at the campaign that is going on there, when I look at the brutal criticisms of their own government and other governments, I think they have quickly taken to some of the most important habits of democracy, which is not to be fearful of your own government.

“You see, in dictatorships, people are fearful of their governments and when the time comes, when they are free of that fear and they are able and willing to express themselves and that has happened in Iraq. Now, hopefully, that will consolidate democracy.
“Like I said, it is not what we did in Iraq; what we did was to give the Iraqis a chance. I think the new headline is: ‘That they may well be taken that chance and if, in fact, they do and they succeed, it will be a new Middle East’.”
Then the question: What if Obama fails? Rice answered: “We cannot afford to. The United States of America cannot afford to have the president of the United States fail.

“Ours is a complicated and complex place - the United States. We are pretty tough on our president. We really are and we criticize them; it is a funny thing, when you are elected the president of the United States, you are the best thing ever to happen to the United States within a few months, you are not smart or not doing a very good job; that is the kind of the way we are with our president.

“But I am hopeful that our president, that our leadership in the United States will be successful… But we, as a country, do not want our president to fail. The US has many difficult problems. We have issues of economic problems; we have issues of immigration; we have problems in our educational system.”

RSA:
If it was in South Africa the magical X words would have been used millions time.
Nigeria flushed Ghananians out of their country before,Zimbabwe want to flush [/b]Nigerians out of their country,South Africa has never said it want to flush other Africans out of their country and there are more African immigrants in South Africa than anywhere in Africa,and research say most of them live [b]peacefully here than where they come from.

honeric01:
And where did u see me supporting crime of any sort? you can keep burying your head in shame because some white dude somewhere said you are the worst human on earth i don't care, as for me, i dey kampe and nothing dey move me as long as i know i am not one of them.

mikelagos:
Some of the biggest Aid agencies are huge scams. If you look at the salaries they pay themselves you might wonder where their conscience is.

honeric01:
@kay9

 Nobody told you fraud has been erased from Nigeria, i said it has reduced, stop quoting me wrongly. i asked you some questions which you are yet to answer, instead of answering, you are trying to ignore them.

Has fraud reduced in Nigeria? yes or no? if no, then what are you basing your answer on?

Does it mean everyone you see go to the cyber cafe are there to perpetrate fraud? yes or no? if yes, then let us know what and why you chose yes.

Thanks

This story is  not complete. Actually he tendered his resignation letter but it was turned down by Jonathan on the grounds that his resignation might send signals that something was wrong with the cabinet.

Rooneyboy:
My best advert no doubt is the popular heineken champions league advert. Were they had a couple that were showing their friends their new house. While the woman was showing her friends her wardrobe , the man was showing his friends his fridge/cold room. (i particularly love the way the men were screaming and the surprise from the women.)

Cogito:
The Guiness billboards that say very simply in large white text. "THE POWER OF NAIJA" right next to a glass of Guinness. It also has the Super Eagles logo so it's a world cup thing. It's just the text there, "THE POWER OF NAIJA".
I love it, I don't drink Guinness but that advert was powerful.

eyoniggar:
I would not lie, I give her a dose of
what she needs after misbehaving and hitting me.

Another thing is, I enjoy the violence, I find it sexy and romantic,
but attimes, it goes out of hand and I feel disguted and furious.

Another consideration is that babes is just 18, please dnt crucify me,
I have dated smally way younger than her that were never violent.

Gosmate:
hi friends i am just joing d forum pls enlightng me more on
d issues of icsl