₦airaland Forum

See I don't like Gadaffi either. I don't think the guy was exceptionally competent. What exactly did he do that anybody who is paramount ruler of an underpopulated but extremely oil-rich country couldn't do?

Gadaffi is just an ordinary guy. . . no remarkable talent or ability, imo.

You want a guy who can make something out of nothing, someone who adds a ton of value.

Toaskarity:
mehn, I heard south africans dont like Nigerians lol abeg Nigeria shouldnt try this with america, I love my life here abeg

but its good to care for your citizen tho

hehehe

Hitler as a leader really was good up until he pursued warfare in the rest of Europe and genocide. The German economy performed much better under him than the previous 20 years or so.

Remember, he made Time magazine Man of the Year.

If he'd not pursued war in Europe, we'd just remember him as some amazing leader who rebuilt a shattered people/nation into a strong country again.

I dunno, if you can get a Hitler kind of guy minus some of the major blunders he made, you'd have a pretty good leader.

Imagine ~20 years after getting your azz kicked by the world in a war, rebuilding your country into the strongest nation in Europe. Clearly the guy had a lot of talent.

Hitler definitely was a bad human being and such, but certainly there was a point where his contributions were far more positive than negative.

The problem with strongman is that 90% of the time you get a Mobuto Sese Seko or the equivalent rather than a Lee Kuan Yew

I honestly don't begrudge you and your family your ill-begotten wealth, ndu_chucks. Probably if I'd been in the same situation, I'd have done the same thing.

However, just as I don't begrudge you, neither should you begrudge those who seek a reckoning

If I were you guys, I would look to begin liquidating those assets in the ND asap. Convert into hard currency which you can then hide away somewhere in Europe.

A word is enough for the wise

Just need to be careful. Judging from Alberta's experience, tar sands can potentially be very damaging on the environment.

mcgman025:
Mrs Dabiri-Erewa also recalled how South African businesses, such as MTN and Multi-Choice – owner of DSTV - among others, are thriving in Nigeria better than any part of Africa without any form of molestation from Nigerian government.

What exactly is her point? Isn't it the ordinary course of affairs not to molest private businesses, assuming that they are compliant with the law?

[quote author=ndu_chucks link=topic=881188.msg10337609#msg10337609 date=1331000661]It suffices to say here that capitalism is not intrinsically evil. Being a capitalist does not mandate one to be a philanthropist, period.

If people legitimately invest in oil blocks risking millions of dollars, when their exploration activities yield fruit, there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of ones labour.

ekt_bear, you of all people are not known to espouse communist ideals. Some of the people you are jealous of and are vilifying provide employment to hundreds of thousands of you people. Many give out hundreds of millions to charities and NGOs. You people should focus on your state governments and demand accountability from your governors. Leave these legitimate capitalists and business men alone.[/quote]You miss the point. I am not an advocate of communism. The point is, given that your family owns Niger Delta oil blocks, I see why you are personally so strongly against Nigeria's inevitable division. It puts your family assets at risk

Hehehe

I guess implicitly the study values democracy for the tangible benefits it brings. Not in and of itself.

Some might prefer democracy even if it always led to worse outcomes, since it at least gives people the right to expression their (potentially very wrong) opinions.

[quote author=Kilode?! link=topic=887083.msg10337642#msg10337642 date=1331002324]@Ekt_bear yes, some people consider Lee Kuan Yew a benvolent Dictator, an oxymoron really. In china's case, Maybe Chairman Mao (too brutal though) preferably Deng Xiaoping.[/quote]Whatever he is, he is the type of leadership pretty much anyone who wants a good country would want.

Well, let me not put it like that. . . some people prioritize "freedom" over economic prosperity (I put the term in quotes because it is a difficult concept to define.)

So for them perhaps a guy like LKY isn't so desirable. And maybe for them pure democracy is best.

I dunno too much about the Chinese government or how it works.

Singapore though. . . having read Lee Kuan Yew's book, I prefer their model to say US/European-style democracy, or whatever it is that we have in Nigeria.

But then again, this assumes brilliant and selfless leadership is available.

[quote author=Dudu_Negro link=topic=887083.msg10337565#msg10337565 date=1330998900]It is refreshing to talk about fundamental needs for a change. 

This article is speaking from an American democracy point of view, which unfortunately is the model for democracies practiced in more than three quarter of democratic geovernments around the world. 

What is the confidence level that democracy will flourish in a selective population of people with genius intellect?   Until a study can prove that democracy practiced by intellectuals is far more successful and sustainable than democracy practiced by less intelligent people, this study is nothing more than spewing statistics and inverted numbers to "earn a living".   [/quote]I don't follow your argument.

Suppose that people are fundamentally not able to recognize good ideas or talented individuals, as this study suggests. Then doesn't this suggest that democracy will always produce sub-optimal outcomes? You can never select the best leaders if people (by their very nature) don't have the ability to successfully recognize exceptional ability.

I'm not saying that we should conclude that the authors of the study are correct. They might be wrong. But the point is that some of the assumptions we make about democracy and why it is successful and when it can be successful might be wrong.

See the point?

coogar:
pent-up anger!
you are right on the money. . . .
unfortunately, some hypocrites would be here spewing asinine comments that ooze sheer idiocy.

if a girl breaks my phone - she would break a jaw.
an eye for an eye - a tooth for a tooth.
if she feels like breaking anything, her father's head would be a good starting point.

wow lol

This jibes with what I've observed, both in the real world and a variety of internet forums (including this one.)

One of the basic assumptions of democracy is that people are on average competent. Which in most large populations is false.

However, democracy seems to be good at choosing slightly above average candidates/ideas rather than the best people/ideas.

With non-democracy, there is a higher chance of disaster happening, I suppose.

The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.
The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.
As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries.
He and colleague Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills. Whether the researchers are testing people's ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess, the duo has found that people always assess their own performance as "above average" — even people who, when tested, actually perform at the very bottom of the pile. [Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It]
We're just as undiscerning about the skills of others as about ourselves. "To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people," Dunning said. In one study, the researchers asked students to grade quizzes that tested for grammar skill. "We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students." Essentially, they didn't recognize the correct answer even when they saw it.
The reason for this disconnect is simple: "If you have gaps in your knowledge in a given area, then you’re not in a position to assess your own gaps or the gaps of others," Dunning said. Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers.
The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a degree of blindness stemming from our own personal lack of expertise.
Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.
Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."

http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html

Which state school in Nigeria has the highest rank, according to these orgs which evaluate and rank universities?

So if it were his best friend who he beat up, would you all also condemn him?

Or is it only because it was his girlfriend that he should be condemned?

Do you take issue with the violence, or that the violence specifically happened to a woman?

The dumb chick shouldn't have destroyed his phone.

wtf was she thinking?

i guess that she also didn't deserve to have the life beaten out of her too, because she is a woman.

but isn't this a double standard? If a man destroys my personal property, I will beat him within an inch of his life.

Yet I suppose doing the same to a woman is somehow more wrong. . .  

All of this stuff is confusing, I just hope I'm never in this sort of situation

Hehe

Yeah this comment had me rollin:

"Lmfao, the same way David Petraeus was boxing Al Qaeda from street to street in Iraq?"

hehehe

Cattle can be imported.

Is anyone really bringing up cattle as a reason nigeria shouldn't break up?

Fix electricity, and I will invest in Nigeria

The thread has served a wonderful purpose, by orienting your minds on Nigeria's breakup.

For this, I thank both the OP and Jinaid Mohammed.

The more we grow comfortable with this possibility, the more likely it can be made reality.

[quote author=Sam_Ikenna link=topic=885573.msg10324922#msg10324922 date=1330831053]The moment I read the interview I knew it would end up Igbo vs Yoruba slug-fest. But folks on a serious note we all need to get along for a moment and read some meaning into this new development. This man mistakenly gave out something, I can sense that. We need to stop laughing at each other for a second and at least send some hard message to these aggressive cabals up north that this time we will not give them an inch.

In the event of a break up all sections of Nigeria will decide where they're going. From his words you can sense hes concluded MB is now theirs, can you imagine that? We are here talking garbage to eachother and these dudes are laying claim to Abuja and its environs. This is how we all will lose again. I said this before and people didn't take it seriously, Southern people and MB need to lay aside their differences for the sake of their children.

I know Kwara and MB is miles away from me but that doesn't mean I should play dead in the face of intimidation. Core north knows how to intimidate us and its been working so far. What this guy did is either a mistake or a deliberate game to tell us that they will show us if we think we can disturb them with SNC. I have a feeling this new allocation battle is a ploy to get the MB back into one united North.

Listen to what he said - "If this country breaks we're going as one united North." When has SW said they're going with Midwest or SE going with SS, we all here have always left such decision completely in the hands of SS or Midwest. Now think about it - isn't it the same argument they used against Biafra? that they were taking Eastern minorities by force? When shall we develop big balls in the south?

I would hope a southern politician is on his way to reply this man. Some body needs to tell him - Hell No! We wont let that happen. Abuja will decided where its going just as Jos, Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Ogun, Benin etc. will also decide theirs. No section will miss this final chance to decide its fate, plain and simple. We wont let core north seal any fate in Nigeria except theirs. This is time for push back folks.[/quote]^-- A very sensible fellow

bashr8:
dont worry this thread is going to realll fun , fowl nyash dun finally open

Don't worry, I can take as good as I give

But. . . Igbo threads are fun

You know you enjoy when we troll them bashr8

Let's not let this thread be derailed into a Kwara one.

The point is that mentally the Northern intelligentsia seems to be preparing themselves for Nigeria's breakup.

In that we shall all be happy. The more smoothly a breakup can go, the better.

Jarus is a strange dude, I dunno what the deal is with him.

Anyway I don't care. . . it will be unfortunate, but if it is the result of popular will, why should I oppose it?

The important thing is to split Nigeria up and build a healthy nation out of my own piece of it. . . everything else is secondary.

My point is that it isn't for him to say who will go with whom.

For all he knows, in a popular referendum they won't even keep Abuja 

And south Kaduna, pretty good odds that they'll not want to have anything to do with Kano, Sokoto and the rest. . . . so a bit hilarious to me that he is thinking that Kaduna City could possibly be his new capital.

Very interesting interview.

Many parts of it made me laugh though. . . clearly these Northern intelligentsia like this guy don't seem to like us very much

Regarding Ilorin and Offa and their status when Nigeria disintegrates. . . let that be decided by popular referendum of those people. I'm pretty sure I already know what decision they'd make.

Anyway, I am glad that they realize that sooner or later this country will split up.