₦airaland Forum

OBJ has been a blessing to significant parts of Nigeria, his home region being a notable exception.

Why couldn't he support Akpabio-caliber governors in his own home state?

Well, we'll see how this turns out.

eh. . .

Hehe

At times I wish this patriotic fervor that Nigerians have when receiving slights from outsiders would exist all the time

Anyway, point understood. . . carry on. Hopefully it doesn't backfire

The amount of the SA economy that depends on Nigeria is probably not very high.

Just because they have some major, dominant companies in Nigeria doesn't mean that those companies/interests make a huge fraction of their total. . . the relationship is not necessarily symmetric.

But the article you posted yourself mentions that they not only want political federalism, but also some measure of fiscal.

So it seems to be an oil money issue as well.

Hehe. . . funny how oil money changes things. Well, best of luck to them

Nigeria has more to lose tbh.

There are more Nigerians in SA than vice versa. . . so any sort of deportation contest will have Nigerians as losers.

Not to mention investment, things like that.

And all of this ignores even just simple african solidarity, which obviously is not worth much to many

I'm not a fan of escalating a situation w/o first trying to resolve it more intelligently. There is nothing to be gained from the current approach and much to be lost.

african unity. . . perhaps like believing in Santa Claus

The only answer is electricity. Nothing else matters (well, not quite, but close enough)

Is there a way to use igbos as a fuel source to generate electricity?

All joking aside, there are probably other folks one would rather import, if that is the strategy. . .

Q: How to fast-track SW's growth?

A: Electricity

logica:
LOL. And after all these years you still have not figured why the German economy "performed" so well? Please watch more documentaries. The plain reason was that the wealth of Jews were being stripped off them. They were forced to forfeit their hard-earned wealth and this was "invested" directly in the economy.

He got the Time Magazine Man of the Year award because the entire world was unaware of what was going on till sh!*t hit the fan.

Stripping away Jewish wealth could not have made Germany strong and healthy again, any more than a hungry man who decides to cannibalize his arm or thigh will grow healthy from that. . . . .

Give credit where credit is due

Fake statistics

nagoma:
@ekt bear


And what do you know about horses? If you had horses in the rain forest you would just eat them and make gbomo with their skin.

Hehe

I did not grow up in a rain forest region, though.

Though at this point, my ancestral town and the environs can probably accommodate horses.

It is like someone fitting a bridle for a horse he wants to break, and the horse thinking that the bridle is a sign of affection rather than control

lmao

nagoma:
Would you ever imagine the US opening a consular office In Aba or in Onitsha? Some will die for America , will kill themselves in desperation to go to America  but America is desperately trying to gain the affection of the ones who don't care about America . That's life.

lmao

"gain the affection"?

If your thinking is typical of Northern elites, ya'll are fvcked.

The consulate in this particular case is to assist the Nigerian FG to control a situation that appears to be spiraling out of hand.

They bear you no particular love. . . just don't want the cart (Nigeria) to be upset and knocked over.

Comparable to the British colonialists opening an outpost somewhere. . .

Heh.

The modern Greeks are a long ways away from the greatness of their vigorous ancestors. Dunno what happened to them. . . perhaps too much decadence under Ottoman rule  

Anyway the country has been a relative backwater for a long, long, long time now.

Also, the # of countries in theory would be determined by free will, referendums. However, in practice the world at large might frown upon Nigeria splitting, and would probably not allow more than 3 or 4 new nations

Anyway 4 or 5 is pretty natural, 100 makes no sense at all and wouldn't happen by the will of the people.

Haha

So why are the Yoruba the Greeks? I reject that in the name of Jesus. We are the Germans or at least the French, not frikkin Greece

Though if this recent story of my governor's spending is true, maybe there is some accuracy to that

birdman:
I dont see the Nigerian FG willingly becoming an ECOWAS++ anytime soon. So I agree with you for the most part on the likely eventuality Nigeria breaking up, even if its in a round-about way. The only thing I see standing against this breakup  is the level of integration among ethnic groups, which is far higher than you would suspect, given the crazy tribalistic threads on Nairaland.

Hehe Ecowas++ is probably the best practical compromise between those who believe as I do (split up) and others who want to see Nigeria remain one.

Heh I don't necessarily want to turn this into a "nigeria must divide" thread, that isn't really its purpose.

But yeah, most of the objections I've seen people raise aren't very difficult to overcome imo. Probably more logistically difficult to have a parent from France and the other from the UK than to have one who is say Yoruba and the other who is Igbo. . . Nigeria really isn't that big a piece of land.

Anyway my focus in this thread is more, "what are the necessary ingredients for a successful country and effective government?"

birdman:
No doubt. Democracy was never designed for an optimal outcome - it just had to be good enough to prevent a small elite class of Lords from dominating forever.  Btw no country really runs a pure democracy - the result would be anarchy. Food for thought for those who think democracy is the best thing since sliced bread,  eg Soyinka

I compare China and India, and to the extent that China has modified its "democracy" to fit its culture and history, to that extent they have been more succesful than India. I dont think its that hard to come up with a similar democratic hybrid that would work in Nigeria. Wether we are willing to is another story.

Regarding bolded, I am all ears. Personally I think Nigeria cannot work and needs to be broken up. If you have another proposal that has a strong chance of working, I'm curious to hear.

The average Indian, like the average person of almost every country is not going to be particularly impressive intellectually.

If Fstranger is not significantly smarter than your average Indian (average IQ there is 85 or something?), I would be highly surprised.

AjanleKoko:
India is one of the oldest and greatest empires on the planet, way before the British showed up.
They also have Sanskrit, the oldest writing language, way before your Roman numerals. Africa, Nigeria . . . well, you said it all. It's just a mashup created by the British.

I'm not sure their political class, though stable, have achieved much beyond building significant military capability. Kind of like Nigeria and Pakistan.
China, on the other hand, have made fantastic strides in infrastructure development.

Yeah. China is a country I am deeply interesting in learning about. East Asians seem to have build up strong, successful countries without necessarily relying on this concept of democracy.

This democracy stuff, truth be told a lot of it is probably just propaganda.

Why is India light years ahead of Nigeria politically?

Anyway, personally all I care about is results. If your country is as poor per capita as Nigeria I'm not much interested in studying your country. I'd rather see what the successful countries did to get where they are rather than study the unsuccessful ones.

So I don't necessarily really view India's democracy as something to emulate.

Not to mention that their democracy is arguably just as corrupt as Nigeria's. . . .

Kilode: optimism can be good, but I think pragmatism is better and more likely to lead to results.

If we (a) had some neighbor we'd gone to war with many times before (b) there was a major religion that most of us share (c) we'd been united under empires in the past, then yes, I'd agree that India might be a better analogy.

Aigbofa:
It is working just fine in India with almost 2000 ethnic groups. I think the problem with Nigeria is one of structure and pseudo democracy we practice.

India honestly is not really a country I admire. It is just basically Nigeria.

Second, despite having many ethnic groups, they have some national things that unite them (the Hindi language, Hinduism), and have been united to some extent by history (previous empires on the sub-continent, struggling against Pakistan, etc.)

Nigeria on the other hand. . . just some big piece of land the British conquered and smushed together.

I understand being pro-Nigeria. The unknown can be a scary place.

Also, it is much easier for me to be anti-Nigeria since I didn't grow up there.

But I think we have to ask hard questions about why Nigeria is not working rather than the trite, simplistic responses people always give of "corruption", "indiscipline", etc.

The answer is likely deeper than those simple responses.

[quote author=Kilode?! link=topic=887083.msg10338211#msg10338211 date=1331014701]This is very depressing.[/quote]The world unfortunately is a depressing place, hehe.

Anyway this is part of the reason I'm so anti-Nigeria. . . by its very design it is kind of doomed to failure. I don't see how this thing will end up working out well.

In addition to this average intelligence assumption implicit in democracy, I suspect that democracy is less effective in ethnically diverse countries like Nigeria.

The US for example would probably be a pretty much worse country if there were three significant ethnic groups rather than just one powerful clan (essentially WASPs and those co-opted by them.)

On the other hand, I suspect that a LKY sort of figure wouldn't work in Nigeria either if he came from one of the 3 major ethnic groups. And probably wouldn't work if from a minority group either. . .

ndu_chucks, nothing in my commentary is about bigotry or bias.

Like I said, I understand the motivations of those like you and your family who obtained oil blocks under mysterious circumstances, and I also understand those who seek to correct this.

Look, I'm a relatively independent observer in all of this. . . my family has no oil wealth whatsoever.

Regarding off-shore oil, those waters belong to the land associated with them. I assume that you are familiar with the law of the sea?

Anything in those waters belongs to the relevant states, not to Nigeria as a whole.