₦airaland Forum

Heh.

That is sufficient, then.

@lagerwhenindoubt: Right, so the biometrics they took, it doesn't seem as if they used it for voting.

But we still have it, right? So if you've already collected 20 million fingerprints (or whatever they did), may as well use it, right? No real reason to collect again for those 20 million people, right?

The screwy election stuff is slightly tangential.

If there are 20 million fingerprints sitting in some computer in Abuja with names and other information associated with 'em (possibly a big "if". Maybe they didn't even really do any biometrics earlier, and just lied. I have no clue), then it seems wasteful to recollect prints for those people.

Pukkah:
Given the role of governments, especially in a developing country like ours, they have to be part of the solution.

What role do you think they should take beyond providing good roads/basic infrastructure, making credit easier to obtain, and perhaps making land accessible for real estate developers?

(I'm not saying they shouldn't have a role beyond this, but just want to hear your ideas.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics

Should answer most of your questions.

Because I don't want to be one of these things where I call you out and then you say, "Oh, I actually wasn't referring to you."

If you want to take shots, at least be man enough to name some names directly.

Heh

There are things that can be done. I don't know if you are aware of some of the measures the Jigawa governor did to spur growth (there are some threads elsewhere on NL that discuss this).

While I don't think government is the solution, it can be part of the solution.

^-- So I don't mistakenly attack you, is the above comment directed at me? If not, then I'll let others explain why your post makes no sense.

Err.

If they are only posting pictures of downtown, then they are being very mischievous.

Ibadan is a city in which the newer parts are on the perimeter, and the oldest (and worst) parts in the center.

Not a fair comparison showing stuff built in the 1850s and comparing it to stuff built in 1999.

Interesting. So it really depends on what pictures one is posting. The last few of Ibadan seem fairly nice to me.

I was under the impression that most of the new development is in the "new city", Bodija and such?

Honestly, Ibadan is a city from the 1800s. Some of these towns you are comparing it to are far newer.

Even in the US (or elsewhere in the world), cities from the 1900s look different from freshly build towns.

Still, I am starting to wonder what some of these governors in the SW have been doing since 1999.

This new problem you pose is more complicated.

If it takes a Zambian corporation to bring light to Nigeria, so be it.

We can become arrogant again after electricity is functional in Nigeria. Now is the time for humility.

In a nutshell, it is not a good look when a man has more interest in a state/governor he has absolutely no stake in or connection to and shows zero interest in his own state and governor.

He isn't really answerable to you. If his people complain or have a problem, then we shall call him to order.

And by "we", I don't even mean Osun people alone. That is another arbitrary boundary. I am more closely related blood-wise and language-wise to Aregbesola than even many Osun State indigenes, heh. Despite being from the neighboring state.

Yorubaland is Yorubaland.

As Aregbe points out, these boundaries/divisions are artificial anyway.

Race/ethnicity doesn't matter to me.

Marriage is an individual/personal thing, not about broad groupings.

There are some white, indian and asian women I've met who I'm more compatible with than most black women. . . ain't got nothing to do with skin color.

Do you enjoy paying 3X more for cement than the market price?

Did you enjoy his sugar, rice and basic foodstuffs monopolies, causing you to pay more than necessary for goods?

He does some good, no doubt. But he also does a lot of evil.

Is the good greater than the evil? I don't know.

But you cannot fake biometric data, can you?

So why do I need to cross-reference anything?

Fingerprints are unique, right? So if someone tries to game the system by entering multiple fingerprints, i'll be able to quickly detect them, no?

They should use the existing data they have as a starting point. No point in duplicating, I think.

No problem. If you google the phrase "string tokenizer c" you'll get lots of other resources too.

Hrm, I like this article a lot:
http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/libc/Finding-Tokens-in-a-String.html

It looks like strtok is a bit dangerous in that it modifies the string s in place.

So just keep that in mind if you need to use your sentence again elsewhere.

AjanleKolo: It seems to be your standard government-funded make-work scheme.

There is plenty of information describing the details online, though no single document that describes it fully, I think. Just google around a bit.

Actually I take back my statement about C being ugly for this. I implemented a version in C that does sort of what you are asking. . . sends output to STDOUT though rather than an array or another text file.

Not too hard if you use this library function strtok.

You'll find the function strcmp also handy.

Blargh.

Low level languages are so brutal.

Conceptually, the way I'd do it is this:

1. Take the string, split it into an array of strings.
2. Loop over your array of strings, detect if the (i)th entry of your array equals the string "Mr", and if so output the (i+1)th string. This only works under the assumption that the string never has the word "Mr" as its last word, though!

Here is the implementation in a high-level language (Ruby in this case):
https://i55.tinypic.com/zmedxd.png

Gives me the following output:

me@me-computer ~ (git::master) $ ruby stringhunt.rb
["James", "Paul", "buss"]

So to build your own version of this in C, you basically need a function to split strings into array of strings. Looks like in C there is a function in library string.h that does this called "strtok."

See this tutorial on how to use it: http://guy-lecky-thompson.suite101.com/string-tokenizing-in-c-programming-a9864

[quote author=Omo_Tier1 link=topic=774138.msg9269818#msg9269818 date=1317674649]In addition, the  SIM card registration exercise has just been concluded nation- which was also a biometric registration, with the information requested similar to that also requested during the INEC voters registration- by harmonizing these two HUGE biometric databases, will the FG not save Nigeria the much needed money by using these existing biometric databases instead of embacking on a
new venture?[/quote]Interesting point. I don't see why the existing biodata couldn't be reused. At the very least, whatever data you've collected you don't need to collect again, right? (assuming names are associated with the data)

You should be able to use the existing data to collect less.

I don't know why he always tries to spin himself as a man of the people. He is essentially a robber baron.

Really great movie, btw. Worth watching if you've not already.

I don't know why I find this thread so funny

@Gbawe: I'm not a dogmatic capitalist, just I have always hated "make-work" sorts of things. And that was the impression I got of this.

But it seems I may have been wrong.

hercules07:
@ekt,

There are quite a few rich kids (actually a lot) that are very brilliant, remember that they have access to better schools than the average kid, the poor ones can come in on scholarship based on merit, some poor kids will also be sponsored by their communities shikena, let LASU be like MIT.

I'm not saying that rich kids are dumber. Just saying that there are rich dumb kids whose money you still want to collect, to subsidize everyone else.

texazzpete:
The article is rather clear once you take a more than cursory look at it.
He is talking about improving LASU and i[b]f possible, signing agreements with some of these foreign Unis to perhaps offer some courses in affiliation with LASU.[/b]

Sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Regarding bolded, again, what does that mean? Say they sign an agreement with UCL. There are at least three possibilities:

1. Specific classes at LASU with UCL profs, but you still get a LASU degree?
2. Degree programs in which you get a UCL degree?
3. A separate university/campus run by both parties?

Like I said, it seems vague to me. . . there are many choices, I'm not sure which route exactly he wants to take.

hercules07:
the first step is to make sure admission is strictly on merit.

Do that and the rich dumb kids won't get in And you need their cash to pay bills.

So you can never really make it pure merit, unless you plan on having the Lagos taxpayer foot much of the bill for education.

Right, so I don't know what "reposition" or "affiliation" look like in this context.

Does reposition = make LASU this university attractive to all these kids going abroad? If so, probably won't work out too well.

Or does he want to make a new flagship campus, one jointly owned/managed by Lagos and some foreign well-regarded university? To use a Georgia analogy, maybe for him "reposition" means create a Georgia Tech to LASU's University of Georgia (Georgia Tech is the best public school in Georgia, very well-regarded, much harder to get into than UGA and also costs more money.)

We are lacking details on how exactly he wants to achieve his goal.

I have an uncle who sent his two kids to Canada for university.

They plan on returning to Nigeria at some point to work.

If the University of Toronto decided to open up a campus in Lagos, why wouldn't my uncle just have his kids go there? They get a world-class education and he saves a lot of cash (even if they charge the same exact tuition, he'll save money on accommodation.) Is this not a win for both my uncle and Lagos? Even U of T wins (well, possibly.)

Like I said, I don't see why this is a dumb idea. Perhaps it is, but it isn't obvious to me.

@texazzpete and @werepeLeri: I don't see the relevance of any cynicism I've had about past policies. Usually I offer reasons for why I think something will work, or won't work. I'm not a light switch flipped to on or off; I evaluate on a case-by-case basis.


Anyway, regarding this, what is wrong with poaching away some of the students who go to the UK spending enormous amounts of money per year on school?

Folks even send their kids to go to Ghana to university.

Why not try to win some of that revenue for Lagos? In a nutshell, why is this a dumb or impractical idea, unworthy of exploring? Nobody has offered any reasons yet for why this is silly and won't work.

Hell, the UK is making a ton of cash from these rich Nigerians. Why is it dumb for Lagos to try to do the same?