₦airaland Forum

mousco:
This is why Niger Delta Avengers re angry

Why Lagos n Abuja re the venues

colli247:
what of fashola and amaechi

agabasam:
I watched the video, ameachi said 13 billion will buy half of Lagos state... Lols

darlenese:
79% did not read this

10% glance through

10% read through people's comment deduce what's up

1 % read it!

EgunMogaji:
I come from planet Uzulu in star cluster ni$df.3421-675.56

I beam around intergalactically

histemple:
How about the summarized version?

aloziedaya:
Yes I know how difficult things are in Nigeria right now. Everyday I read and hear from the media news and articles about Nigeria that trouble the heart.
Life in Europe is better in terms of basic needs as humans, but socially it has decayed beyond imagination. The future of our children is at stake here socially and morally. The western culture is eating deep in our children.
So I'm considering bringing my family down to Nigeria to train them in our own culture.
Do you think I'm making a mistake?
Please your candid advice.

stephenduru:
This was shared by a twitter user.He wrote....

'#NIGERDELTA: A Stingray flat-bottomed gunboat of the NA Amphibious Forces armed with two CIS-50 12.7mm machine guns.

Image credit: beegeagles

Source: http://www.trezzyblog.com/2016/06/photo-of-nigerian-army-gunboat-used-in.html

alfred5:
Since 2003, have you heard that Anambra State owes salary?

Anambra State pays 13 months salary. Every 21 ist

scribble:
Buhari a great dullard

RichieDaVinci01:
and some pippu that cannor manage and have sense will say APC. IT IS TOMATO EBOLA stop disturbing someone's eye!

DMeanMan:
Nigeria Bureau of statistics?

1.5 million lost their jobs in the past year alone? Like seriously 1.5 million people?

I'm disappointed you believe this mehn.

OLADD:
He was speaking to both 95% and 5%. Nigeria is Mr. President's first constituency.

DMeanMan:
I get irritated when people display questionable sentiments.

APC has been in government for a year and Nigeria has been in existence for about 60 Years. Or APC is also the reason for unemployment in the Country?

Rubbish!

Stop crying over poo. It reeks of so many things I really dont want to get banned for!

Ojestas:
Security SLAPPER !!

DaBullIT:
Dasuki was arrested on gun charges


Nobody complained


and didn't one of these muuurfuckas say they have to blame the head (Buhari) for every failure in this country ?


Well then the same rule applies


If this news is true , then the leader of that community "the head" should be arrested , which means this arrest is justified


Won't be surprised if there are other reasons for his arrest

Tex42:
Agreed, "GEJ's administration placed Nigeria in this monumental and unprecedented level of corruption she is experiencing" but what Nigerians want to know is how u or the incumbent president Buhari intends to turn the table on the present state of the economy.

A year is gone yet Buhari, APC, and ur likes keep singing corrupt
Like it was the only reason why Buhari was elected. Tell me how the alleged "recovered looted funds" TSA policy have prevented the economy from this recession. One would think that an intelligent leader would hit the economy running in his first year in office then return to what ever campaign(anti-corruption) he has in subsequent years, but a vindictive and nepotic Buhari will never...

"It has been said that if you want a conversation with a habitual
complainer to end abruptly, just ask him how he intends to fix the
problem. That is the question Nigerians want answered by President Buhari "

And how is the IPOB and it's activities contributing to the economic downturn naija is facing, is IPOB a terrorist/violent militia group that is now causing investors to divest from Naija? Baba get ur facts right abeg!

Having worked twice at the Nigerian Presidential villa and once at the British Parliament, if there is anything I have learnt, it is that it is impossible to over inform a leader. You can under inform him, but no matter how much information you give a leader, you cannot give him too much information.

In today’s world, strength and weakness are gauged differently than they were, say in 1984. In the millennial age in which we live in, information is power and lack of information is weakness.

My concern is that there are a lot of weaknesses in Nigeria’s seat of power because not enough information is being given to President Muhammadu Buhari.

I, like other Nigerians, have heard or read reports of ministers in President Buhari’s cabinet being afraid to challenge him or disagree with him. Perhaps unawares, the minister of state for petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, corroborated these reports in a recorded YouTube video now circulating where he revealed that the President ignores his ministers when they bring up issues that he does not want to discuss.

Having such anodyne personalities around you just means that you are living in a bubble, seeing things as you want them to be and not as they are.

On Friday May 20th, 2016, Dr. Yemi Kale, the Statistician General of the Federation and head of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics revealed that Nigeria’s economy had not grown in the first quarter of the year but had rather shrunk by 0.36%, the worst contraction in 25 years!

Since the announcement was made, there has been various reactions with pundits pointing at this or the other as being the cause of this setback. But I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubts that this negative trend owes more to President Muhammadu Buhari’s utterances on our economy and polity than to any other single causative factor.

The bigger problem is that even though I suspect that his ministers know that what I have just said is true, they would rather pander to the President and like Dr. Chris Ngige, say that Nigerians are lucky to have President Buhari (obvious Ngige does not know the meaning of luck).

In the last eleven months, the President had traversed the globe and has spoken about Nigeria’s economy as if he was the chief undertaker of our polity rather than the chief marketer that he is meant to be.

Of what benefit is it to the President’s agenda or to Nigeria’s economic well being for him to go to foreign nations and instead of highlighting the positive things that are happening in Nigeria, he begins to regale his hosts with the most unsavory stories about Nigeria.

And some of the stories the President tells are just that-tales.

They are not factual. At best they are arguable. You go to India for a summit where other world leaders are competing with you for the attention of venture capitalists and foreign investors and while your counterparts are talking about how great their countries are, you tell the audience how everybody in your country is corrupt except you and oh, can they come and invest in your country?

Only a foolish investor would go and invest in a country whose President thinks his citizens are ‘criminals’ (as the President said to the Telegraph of UK in February) and whose officials are ‘fantastically corrupt’ (as the President said in agreement with British PM David Cameron when questioned by Sky News).

The President speaks on the Nigerian economy and polity without any filters and his comments are causing his chickens to roost with devastating consequences for all of us.

Never in the history of Nigeria has there been such a divestment of investment as we have seen in the past year.

Truworths has pulled out of Nigeria, Virgin Atlantic has closed up shop, Iberia is pulling out, RenCap is pulling funds from Nigeria, both Alquity Investment Management Ltd. and Duet Asset Management Ltd. are divesting their Nigeria holding. Zenith Bank laid off 1,200 staff, FCMB let go 700 employees, Ecobank sacked 50% of its top management staff. The President of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Tony Ejinkeonye revealed that in just two months 50,000 staff were laid off in Abuja alone.

The results are telling. A little over a year ago, Nigeria was projected by CNNMoney to be the third fastest growing economy in the world behind China and Qatar yet just two weeks ago the International Monetary Fund released its World Economic Outlook and Nigeria is not even among the top 15 fastest growing economies in Africa let alone the world!

And when you try to raise the alarm, the refrain from the government and its horde of unofficial spokesmen is that the downturn is caused by the fall in crude prices.

Yet this logic is flawed. The government’s own economic monitoring agency, the National Bureau of Statistics itself reported that the exponential growth Nigeria enjoyed especially from 2012 to its 2014 climax (when our economy overtook South Africa to be Africa’s largest economy) was spurred not by the oil sector, but “this growth was largely driven by improved activities in the telecommunications, building and construction, hotel and restaurant and business services” to quote the NBS.

Yes, oil accounts for something like 90-95 percent of our foreign exchange revenues but it only accounts for a mere 15% of our GDP.

The service sector and the commercial and real sector are the engine or used to be the engine of our economic growth. But these sectors are heavily capital and technology intensive and require cooperation with foreign investors and when you consistently bad mouth your economy and its regulators investor confidence tanks and the result is what we are seeing today.

I support President Buhari’s anti corruption war but it should not be a substitute for sound economic ideas or policies.

And the way the President has carried out his anti corruption crusade is in itself self sabotaging and feeds the narrative of those who say that Nigeria is far too complex and dynamic a country to be run by someone who should be quietly collecting his pension.

And President Buhari’s behavior is flowing down the pyramid. There is a contagious effect in the utterances of major figures in his administration. For instance, when Vice President Osinbajo tells the world that the Jonathan administration looted $15 Billion in security contracts, many people in the West who like to read such stories to justify their hidden opinion that the Black man cannot govern himself, will clap for him.

Coming from the nation’s own Vice President, the Western press will report the news as a fact. At that level, such a statement carries the weight of an admission.

But then ask yourself, what was the entire security budget for the five years that Jonathan was President of Nigeria?

In 2011, defense and security had a budget of ₦348 billion or just over $2 billion. In 2012 it skyrocketed to ₦921 billion or $5.7 billion. It grew to ₦1.055 trillion in 2013 or $6 billion. In 2014, ₦968 billion was budgeted for defence and security or $5.8 billion. The 2015 budget was passed in April and President Jonathan handed over to President Buhari a month later so I cannot see how the previous administration could have ‘chopped’ that money.

So of the $19 billion budgeted for defence and security while former President Jonathan was in office, how could $15 billion have been looted when more than half that amount went to paying salaries?

Did Vice President Osinbajo think this accusation through?

The President and his vice with their cabinet and their political appointees are not a court. They cannot convict anybody. As such when they speak this way, what it amounts to is propagandized activity.

In an anti corruption war one must separate activity from results. Results are convictions from a court after due and diligent prosecution. And when you look at it from that perspective, this administration has been delivering activity and not results.

For instance, then candidate Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressive Congress, had called the subsidy payments made by the Jonathan administration a fraud! They claimed that the amount was too high at ₦1.1 trillion in 2014. Well if fuel subsidy had been a fraud, the first thing that should have happened naturally when President Muhammadu Buhari took over was that the amount should have reduced, but it DID NOT reduce. As a matter of fact, Nigeria spent over $5 billion on fuel subsidy in 2015 and President Buhari was in power for most of that year!

The point I am making here is that the elections are over. President Buhari and his administration should stop tarnishing the image of Nigeria in the mistaken belief that they are rubbishing the person of former President Jonathan. The President should take in the big picture and realize that you need to be below somebody in order to pull him down.

One year has come and gone and has seemingly been wasted pointing fingers in blame instead of at solutions. The time for blame games have gone.

Only last month, President Buhari complained that the Sahara desert was advancing southward. He should also realize that that is not the only thing going south. The Nigerian economy is going south at perhaps a faster rate and blaming others for it will never stem the tide.

The President should focus on marketing his plans and policies when he travels abroad instead of de-marketing the plans and policies of former President Jonathan’s administration.

It has been said that if you want a conversation with a habitual complainer to end abruptly, just ask him how he intends to fix the problem. That is the question Nigerians want answered by President Buhari.

Under former President Jonathan, Nigeria’s economy exploded and became the largest economy in Africa and the 24th largest economy in the world. Let it not be said that under President Buhari that economy collapsed like a pack of clouds because the hand that should have steered the ship was too busy pointing an accusing finger.

Sunnynwa:
2 great men

OrlandoOwoh:
Editors in most of our tabloids are not doing anything. Buhari never said Abacha didn't steal, but that all that had been said about him (Abacha) stealing remained allegations until proven otherwise by a court of law. The statement of Buhari is legally right. I challenge the OP to give us the link of the exact quote and a video evidence which was taken during the praying commemorating Abacha's death, keep shut?

wristbangle:
To be candid, fayose is saying the truth here.

But this guy sha, he has not done anything for ekiti people rather than patronising their ponmo, beans, meat and others. Ekiti people too like food sha

TeeFeh:
So I went to a shop where they sell tomatoes and pepper and they said this costs 1000 I actually thought she was joking until she started to frown when I was actually laughing out loud and she insisted on 1k,so I took a picture of it with my Tecno L8 device immediately!!

Please is this what you guys are experiencing too?I haven't cooked for 3months now and I came back to my food life and met this?

What's the best alternative please?
Is the dried tomatoes good?even Gino is now #100 and it used to be #50

400billionman:
Everybody eats Ewa Agoyin..

Despite his electoral promise to reduce petrol pump price from the N87 per litre that he met it, President Muhammadu Buhari increased the price to N145! With this increment, Buhari has further impoverished Nigerians.


Nigerians should be reminded that on April 14, 2015, President Buhari’s ally and former Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Prof. Tam David-West, told Nigerians that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (who was then President-elect), will reduce the fuel pump price from N87 to N40 per litre. Buhari did not debunk this statement made by his friend and major supporter.

Also, when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government of Dr Goodluck Jonathan reduced the petrol pump price from N97 to N87 per litre in January 2015, former Lagos State Governor who is now Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola said N10 reduction of the petrol pump price was too low and that Nigerians will get a better deal under Buhari. Fashola tweeted on January 18, 2015; “On PMS price reduction by N10. Now they listen. Oil the raw material drop over 50%, N10 is just about 10%. Good try but Nija can get a beta deal.” In rewarding Nigerians for electing him as president, President Buhari opted to increase petrol pump price by N58.50! The first justification of the increment was removal of subsidy. But Nigerians were later stunned when the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo said pump price of petrol was increased because Nigeria was broke!

In other words, President Buhari increased petrol pump price because the country was broke and it needed to shore up its revenue base. The N58.50 added to the previous pump price of N86.50 was an Indirect Tax imposed on each litre of petrol purchased by Nigerians. Simply put, the Federal Government is indirectly collecting N58.50 naira tax from suffering Nigerians on each litre of petrol they buy. Buhari is no doubt acting like the proverbial Agbalowomeri Baale Jontolo (A king that exploit his extremely poor subject to further enrich himself). It is on record that on May 2 this year, the federal government, in the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) Template released in Abuja, told Nigerians that it was subsidizing petrol at N12.62 per litre.

In 2012, when the Dr Jonathan administration removed fuel subsidy and increased petrol price to N141 per litre, crude oil was selling at $111 per barrel. If not wickedness, how can petrol price be increased to N145 per litre when crude oil is now selling at $49 per barrel? Increasing petrol pump price by N58.50 when the federal government claimed it was subsidising the product at N12.62 per litre is clear wickedness on the part of President Buhari. In the history of Nigeria, increase in price of petrol has never been as high as it was done by Buhari, putting Nigerians in severe hardship as the product affects every sector of the economy.

Too bad, those who opposed removal of fuel subsidy in 2012 and funded the Occupy Nigeria protest are the ones canvassing support for this Buhari’s wicked one year anniversary gift to Nigerians.

The labour unions are now completely cowed, dashing completely hope of the common people of Nigeria.

Interestingly, this is not the first election promise by APC/Buhari that have been jettisoned since they got into office.

The N5,000 unemployment benefits promised the downtrodden was derisively put down by this President as “largesse” with the president spurning the emotional plea of his own wife to the contrary. To add salt and insult unto injury, he travelled abroad to make the statement.

Despite the mindless and indefensible hike in fuel price, the commodity is still not available. Minister of state for Petroleum says there is no forex to pay for fuel import; yet there is forex to indulge Buhari’s foreign-trip profligacy.

Presidential spin doctors and APC chieftains labouring to hoodwink the people speak glibly of how so-called deregulation will make products available, reduce cost through competition and the interplay of market forces, as well as encourage private sector to build more refineries.

But thank God who loves Nigerians so much, the lies of these people was by divine arrangement, I suppose, revealed by no less a person than the junior minister Ibe Kachikwu himself when he said importation of fuel continues till 2019.

Nigerians should be reminded that the manner of hardship being faced now was also faced during Buhari’s first coming as a military dictator when people had to queue for essential commodities. Now, Nigerians can’t even afford common tomato to prepare soup.

So, Nigerians you have heard the truth: Under Buhari/APC, it is almost certain that our suffering will continue till 2019. Nigerians, remember I warned you before Buhari was elected; I have been warning you since Buhari became president and I am warning now that if nothing is done urgently, the economy of Nigeria will collapse.

May the good Lord help us but as they say “heaven helps those who help themselves.”

Mr Ayodele Fayose is the Governor of Ekiti State.