₦airaland Forum

How can you compare a country which spent the last 100 years building its infrastructure and is primarily in maintenance mode to one which is nearly starting from scratch?

Better analogy would be Dubai.

And they borrowed heavily to turn their backwater provincial state into a place with infrastructure as good anywhere in the world.

Anyway, this is the good thing about federalism. Every state can do as it thinks best.

20 or 30 years time, we'll see which approach has paid off

Obiagu1:
Any governor that borrows to fix roads is silly and a thief!

Foolish servant! Heed the words of Jesus:

The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

Strive to be more like Servant #1

Africa has the worst infrastructure as a continent in the world.

I could see if we were some place like NYC or Toronto where the infrastructure is already great. At that point, you are probably deep into diminishing returns. Each dollar you invest in infrastructure adds less and less to the economy (probably the most amusing example of this I've heard of is the famous "bridge to nowhere" proposed in Alaska )

But in Africa, we are further away from diminishing returns than any continent on earth.

So if a governor tells you he won't borrow to fix road because he is afraid of debt, then that is a pretty good sign the governor has no clue what he is doing.

Obiagu1:
Until Lagos, Cross River and others are asked to pay up you'll understand.

As it stands now, it's better not to borrow!

Cross Rivers debt, I dunno enough to say whether that was worthwhile.

But Lagos? They are borrowing to build basic infrastructure like roads and rail.

Can you think about the massive multiplier effect that will have on the Lagos economy?

If Fashola had decided 4 years ago that he would ignore that MASSIVE opportunity for an economic boom and justified such a decision because of limited funds, then he would be a very foolish man.

If Fashola wants to borrow for roads, rail and power projects, then absolutely fine by me.

If there is no need to borrow and ALL the infrastructure needed for a state can be done w/o any debt, then fine. But I was under the impression that the revenue of most states doesn't allow that.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that one borrows needlessly. But if there is a wonderful opportunity that your current funds don't allow you to pursue, borrowing makes sense.

I'm not even super-religious, but I think the parable of the talents from the Bible illustrates really well why this approach is foolish.

[quote="The Bible"]24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

  26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

  28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’[/quote]A governor who would prefer to let the roads in his state lay in ruin rather than borrowing money to fix them is no different from the wicked and lazy servant from this parable.

You have to focus on the big picture (what provides the greatest benefit to my people in the long run?) rather than the small picture (I don't want debt.)

Now, granted, if your governor is a thief or will otherwise somehow embezzle the money, then definitely you don't want him to borrow.

But assuming your governor is trustworthy, the right thing to do is to maintain and improve infrastructure.

Obiagu1:
From experience, Nigerian government makes no more from investment. Why should you borrow money to build roads when you'll make no money out of it?

You don't make more money from the roads directly (unless it is a toll road.)

But your people get richer as a result of having better roads. Richer people => larger potential tax revenue. So indirectly the government makes more money.

Anyway, if it helps you conceptually, just pretend every road proposed is a toll road. That way the payoff is clear.

The government took away a school from our family too in the 70s

Talking with that side of my family earlier today, it looks like they will try to get it back too. And build a world-class high school.

I really hope that this happens.

I've heard Nigerians mock Somalia before because of its lack of a FG.

Does Nigeria have one?

Err, it works with SLL too.

Just delete from start and move to end.

It doesn't really make sense as a policy.

It is like a businessman who has an opportunity which will yield 30% returns, but is afraid of borrowing at 12%.

We would call such a businessman foolish.

Building infrastructure right now will yield massive dividends for the people of each state. It makes no sense to say you won't invest in basic infrastructure because you are afraid of debt.

Borrowing money to put pounded yam (in this analogy, recurrent expenditure) into your belly is a bad idea, but borrowing money to buy a high-returning asset (capital expenditure in this analogy) isn't necessarily bad.

Yep, I guess it is pretty easy with a doubly linked list, assuming you have a tail pointer.

You can just delete the last K elements and and insert each of them at the start of the list. Update your tail pointer after each element is removed.

Almost works with SLL, just cannot update tail pointer cheaply.

O(N) iterations is very possible.

Perhaps a good place to start is with a very small string "abcde" and K=2.

Try to move characters over by 2.

Indeed, i should have written K*N and N, respectively.

There is a small typo in the above that causes the code to hang. You probably mean to increment "i", not K.

The above works, and is essentially what I did.

But it is a K^2 algorithm. Each character only gets moved over one each iteration. Would be nice if each character gets moved over K in each iteration.

Can you do it in O(K)? This is what I was asked which I messed up on.

I don't think he is correct on that statement, so didn't bother addressing it.

It is like we don't have a government in Nigeria.

Polio, it cannot handle.

Millennium development goals, no way.

Vision 2020, no chance. Should probably be renamed vision 2220.

Boko Haram, they supposedly know the sponsors but cannot handle.

Roads that it owns and is supposed to maintain, no chance.

In your own personal life, do you let your property fall apart into ruin? If not, then I wonder how anyone can keep silent at the FG doing the same thing.

LAGOS State Governor Babatunde Fashola has slammed the Federal Government for constant neglect on the state of roads in the state, especially the Apapa/Oshodi Expressway and the Lagos Airport Road.
Posted at 30/09/2011 04:39 AM | Updated at 30/09/2011 04:39 AM

By Femi Oluokun

LAGOS State Governor Babatunde Fashola has slammed the Federal Government for constant neglect on the state of roads in the state, especially the Apapa/Oshodi Expressway and the Lagos Airport Road.

He said that despite the strategic link the roads serve to the nation's economy, the FG remained adamant in its effort to fix the dilapidated roads, which until now, constitute a nightmare to motorists.

Speaking at the unveiling of the 1000 metric tonnes transfer loading station yesterday, he said it was important for the Federal Government to rise up to the challenge as the present state of the roads which links the major sea ports and airport is an eyesore and belies a nation professed to be interested in industrialisation.

Fashola said the Airport road, which is first point of call for visitors to the country is lying in a sorry state, and in a state unbefitting for the nation.

For visitors into our country, the first pothole deals a heavy blow and really, you do not have the chance to make another first impression.

‘Companies, organisations bring in their goods through the ports and if those companies cannot evacuate their goods from the ports, what industrialisation are we talking about’, he said.

The governor tasked the agencies responsible for fixing the roads to rise up to the challenge and restore the nation's glory. Commenting on the new transfer loading station, he described the new facility as some of the critical contents of the pre-election campaign promises to aggressively pursue a preventive rather than curative healthcare programme for its citizens.

‘We deployed many strategies to achieve this promise of a healthy citizen through preventive strategies.

Some of them include provision of clean and portable water which has seen us return Iju and Adiyan Water Works to full operational capacity by the provision of a 12 Megawatts Independent Power plant that has boosted water production and supply’, he said.

Fashola further said that the Oshodi Transfer Station was incorporated as medical waste treatment plant to deal with medical waste that has hitherto constituted a health hazard to residents.

‘Our work in this plant is not finished as we would be encouraging investments in specialised waste trucks like our PSP trucks which will be collecting medical waste from our various hospitals and health facilities for delivery to this site and proper disposal’, the governor said.

Meanwhile, in his address, Commissioner for Environment, Tunji Bello, said the Oshodi Transfer Station is the second of the series of the 20 proposed by the government to improve waste collection efficiency from the point of generation within the catchment area of Oshodi, Isolo, Mushin, Anthony, Mafoluku, Mile 2, Amuwo Odofin, Okota and Illupeju.

‘The strategic location of this facility in Oshodi is to allow the waste generated in its environ to be deposited and warehoused before transfer to final dump site or landfill at off peak period.

‘This measure will reduce the vehicular traffic to the landfill site, hence, another major feat in our adaptation in mitigating climate change’, Bello said.

Earlier, Managing Director of the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Ola Oresanya said the facility derived its concept from the holistic approach for the implementation of waste management strategic plan for Lagos Mega City.

http://www.momentng.com/en/news/4234/fashola-blasts-fg-over-apapaoshodi-airport-roads-.html

Peter Obi is correct.

By driver he means cab driver right?

Where in the world do cab drivers earn minimum wage?

That type of job, the amount of money you make is dependent on how many customers you get. So who would even be paying them minimum wage?

You should be able to do whatever you like with your private property I guess.

But this seems very wrong to me.

Wrong and unnecessarily divisive.

Whites can go to HBCUs these days, men can go to Wellesley or Wheaton, etc.

I don't think religious discrimination is a good idea, legal or not.

I got this at a job interview today. Actually got the problem kind of wrong, lol (well, the second part at least.)

You are given a string of length N. Pretend it is stored in a character array or something.

Imagine that you want to write a function that does K circular shift of strings.

In other words, given a string of length N, it shifts every character over by K.

As an example, suppose we are given the string S defined as follows:
S = "Ekt_bear is solving a puzzle"

If we do a K=3 circular shift of S, we get as output
"zleEkt_bear is solving a puz"

Two questions:
1) How can we solve this problem, assuming no constraints on memory usage?
2) How can we sove this problem, if the only extra memory we have is a single character variable called temp? This of course means that you are not allowed to create a new array and use this to solve the problem.

Jason: Your point taken and understood (though I don't agree.)

Jason, I hope you see my point?

I've raised legitimate questions. But rather than answers, all I get is people yarning dust.

Perhaps you can do a better job of answering 'em.

How many of these Itsekiri, Edo and other groups do you see working themselves up into a frenzy over this?

How is Edo interest being threatened?

How is Itsekiri interest being threatened?

This is a essentially a political squabble between two factions of the PDP, is it not?

The problem I have is that you guys are taking what is a political beef between two specific groups of politicians as some sort of larger ethnic or religious battle.

Let us follow your implications a bit. If this is Edo/Itsekiri against North, then shouldn't you Jason when you go home find and kill some abokis somewhere? Even abokis who have nothing to do with BH? If this is Christianity vs. Islam, then perhaps you should go find some muslims somewhere in your town to kill.

So tell me again why this is an ethnic or religious conflict rather than a political one. And kindly explain to me what action you'd like me to take, if you do view it as ethnoreligious.

Personally I am not afraid to kill or even commit genocide/ethnic cleansing. But I need to have very good reasons for what I'm doing.

And thus far, none of ya'll have provided that.

I am not advocating sitting on the fence.

I'm saying:

A) We don't give a crap about either of these other 2 or 3 sides. Don't intervene to help any of them, since none of them concern you.
B) However, still be ready to defend yourself and your interests as necessary.

I think you guys are advocating (B) (which I agree with), but also want to intervene to help one of the actors (which I don't agree with.)

If you are advocating picking a side, you sure as hell better come up with some good arguments in favor of this.

And not fluffy bulls1t like "The South", etc, etc.

ShangoThor:
Absolutely hilarious, I will say this only once because in my opinion I think "SOME" Yoruba are delusional and suffer from a FATAL CONCEIT.

The position of abstaining, sitting on the fence, or 'ronu-ing' as I fondly put it (LOL) is not going to all of a sudden enable the Yoruba to:

(a) Mobilise a well organised homogenous Militia Unit out of the rabble we currently have, e.g. OPC - a front for Agbero's and area boys, this takes time and planning. It is not something that can be done overnight because we wake up overnight to find our women are being brutally gang violated, and our children are being slaughtered, and our homes are being bombed or burnt out. Especially a militia Unit that cannot be compromised by individal comprising members by bribery. My point being this kind of command structure requires planing and awareness.

(b) Or generate large cash storage of modern weaponry needed to defend ourselves. I suppose some believe we can do this overnight, this makes me laugh so much because it is strategically elementary, especially considering that other factions and regions are already armed or arming themselves.

Ah.

Dude, I'm totally in support of building a militia. 100%, absolutely. Something that should be done anyways, regardless of the current events.

But that doesn't mean I'd use those resources on either of the actors in this struggle. I don't care about either of them.

@PointB: This is (mostly) a political struggle between some elements in the core north and those in the PDP. It is a political struggle, not an ethnic or religious one, to me. I don't care about either of these two factions struggling.

@jason123: There is no "South." When was there one?

I have no clue why I'm supposed to be supporting some middle belt group fighting a core north group, with the middle belt group's objective that political power should rotate to the east after GEJ.

Why do I care about any of that? How does that benefit me? Of what relevance are their goals to mine?

I even wonder how person A has so much time to be giving person C advice.

Shouldn't he be spending more time bobbing and weaving rather than giving unsolicited advice to 3rd parties?

That style of boxing where you don't focus usually leads to getting knocked the F out. Reminds me a bit of the Mayweather fight two weekends ago, heh.

Ya'll face your business, and we'll face ours.

In a nutshell, this is two people A and B fighting in the middle of the street, and trying to get person C (a dude going to the grocery store) to intervene on one side or another.

Neither A or B know C from Adam.

C's best bet is to observe and watch for a bit, but probably run his initial errand (grocery store.)

A and B of course, it is strategic for them to pretend as if C has any interest in the fight.

A will say, "If you don't help me, you are sitting on the fence."

B will say, "C ronu, oh"

PointB:
In order words, it doesn't matter how many Yorubas are deliberated targeted for religious reason in the Boko Haram vs MEND and Akhwat Akwop encounter, provided the Yorubas in the SW are not 'affected.'

Warped and disappointing, very disturbing logic coming from you!

Why would Yoruba be targeted for religious reasons in a BH vs. Mend vs. Akhwat encounter?

Lmao.

Man, you are grasping for straws here dude.

Anyway, Mend will never battle BH simply because they don't even operate in the same territory. Unless you just mean Mend bombing some Northern buildings. In which case it is Mend killing random innocent abokis, not BH.

@Whitehorse: Right, so if BH strikes in Lagos, then a likely outcome of that is unconnected/innocent Hausa/northerners unconnected to BH being lynched.

So are you suggesting that we lynch these people pre-emptively, or something?

What exactly are you suggesting that the SW does in this matter that doesn't concern them? Ethnic cleansing? Terrorism of our own? I'm all ears.

None of these groups are fighting in my land. So why do I care about them?

Do any of them threaten me or my interests? If so, how?

If you see two people fighting a block away in the street, you may watch. But unless one of them is your relative or friend, you will not intervene, will you?