₦airaland Forum

The locations of those refineries sounds good to me

Lmao. Always enjoyable to see the whiny complaints of a loser and lowlife ignored.

Excellent job, all

GEJs first order of business needs to be to sack him and replace him with Soludo, Okonjo-Iweala, Aganga, people of that caliber.

1) CBN Sharia council
2) CBN Hotel
3) Dumb cash policy

Three blunders in a fairly short period of time. How many more will we find if we look more deeply?

CBN Sharia council. Lmao.

In a supposedly secular state?

Is the only way to implement a no-interest bank through Sharia?

You can offer the product without introducing religion into the mix.

I've always suspected this Sanusi guy. How did he end up with this job, given his large # of bigoted writings on gamji.com?

Sanusi must go. Sack him and replace him and other Shariaists in government with competent secular men.

Get rid of all of these goddamn . . . in government. Useless idiots.

Way too many states in Nigeria, period.

States should look something like this:
https://culture.chiamaka.com/images/nigeria_linguistic_1979.jpg

I just want everything deregulated.

Government stop with price controls, and stop with all these import restrictions on cement, diesel, etc.

Let anyone who wants to import cement, diesel, rice, petrol do it. Just charge heavy import duties.

Why should anyone need a licence to import these things?

Capt Daniel Omale

20 May 2011

In January this year, the price of Jet A1, the dominant jet fuel used for most of the aircraft operating in Nigeria was N109 per litre in Abuja. By the first week of March, the price had risen to N146 per litre. On the May 18 - two days ago, the major oil marketers in the country informed airline operators that price of the same product was climbing in excess of N250 per litre. Therefore, in just over two months, the cost of buying Jet A1 increased by over 100 per cent without any sign of abatement.

It is interesting to note that jet fuel gulps about 40 per cent of an airline's revenue in a normal market where carriers can adjust ticket prices to balance their income. In Nigeria, where ticket price is controlled by the government as opposed to market forces, it is highly unlikely that the few surviving airlines can cope with the trend of fuel prices. I predict that by the end of the first half of this year, the price of Jet A1 will reach or surpass N450 per litre in the same location. Therefore, air fare from Abuja to Lagos must be priced beyond N40,000 before any airline can comfortably operate to recover marginal profit. While air passengers may initially resist the increase, there is no other safer and faster option of travelling within this country.

The two factors responsible for the constant increase in fuel prices are: the unrest in the Middle East and the fact that Nigeria does not refine aviation fuel. While we have little control over the crisis in the Arab world, it is interesting to note that in Benghazi, Libya, with all the fighting in that country, Jet A1 still sells for less that N65 per litre. It is equally cheaper in neighbouring Benin Republic (at about 130 per litre) than in the 'Giant of Africa' and the sixth largest oil producer in the world.

The major oil marketers in Nigeria have formed a cartel, since the price of aviation fuel is uncontrolled by the government. Marketers make twice the profit on petrol without any binding regulation. Unfortunately, the burden is on the travelling public.

Since our government is finding it hard to establish new refineries and keep the existing ones functional, it will be irrational on my part to advocate for the establishment of modern refineries capable of producing Jet A1 for the country.

There are, therefore, two ways for the government to lower the cost of acquiring this scare commodity: government can equally subsidise imported Jet A1 like, it does for petrol. The second option is to initiate the production of Jet A1. In my opinion, it is easier to do the first and graduate into the second, which holds a more lasting solution.

If neither of the above is acceptable to the authorities, the easiest way to alleviate the financial burden of the airlines is to completely deregulate the market for each carrier to charge any fare of their choice.

The amount of fuel burnt by an aircraft as it flies from one airport to another is dependent on several factors; the age, model and version of the aircraft all play an important role. Every new version of aircraft produced by manufacturers is more fuel-efficient than its predecessor due to improvements in aircraft systems technology and engine performance.

In the United States, all of the major airlines, excluding US Airways, have a sophisticated fuel hedging programme that no human being can really understand. To keep it simple, "hedging" is like insurance against sudden price increases. Most of the airlines pay upfront or commit cash to purchase fuel into the future at a more or less defined price. Keeping in mind these hedging programmes are always changing. Most airlines currently have 30-50 per cent of their next six months' fuel hedged at an agreed rate per barrel of crude.

30-50 per cent of anticipated fuel usage may not sound like a lot. But the reality is that the airlines can end up losing billions of dollars if they hedge in the wrong direction. They can equally save billions if their hedges work out. It's important to note that hedging is very expensive and ties up a lot of cash. US Airways has not hedged over the last couple of years and has generally maintained a net fuel cost advantage over their competitors.

According to the latest statistics from the General Aviation Bureau, due to the fuel price surge, the cost of fuel has amounted to 31 per cent of the cost of the major business of airline companies in the first half of this year; up from 22 per cent. The whole airline industry has afforded additional cost expenditure of $1.27 billion.

The airlines are in perilous financial conditions. Two major airlines, representing more than twenty per cent of the industry, are in bankruptcy. Passenger carriers reported over $10 billion in 2002 net losses. Industry debt now exceeds $100 billion, while the industry's $15 billion total market capitalisation continues to decline. Our ability to borrow to support continuing losses is evaporating. The few airlines that have been able to record profit are doing so under tremendous adversity. And with the prospect of war on the horizon, the overall picture is bleak.

Unfortunately, Nigerian airlines are severely affected by two major factors: cost of borrowing and the constant depreciation of the Naira. While the rest of the world's currencies enjoy exchange advantage over the U.S. dollar these days, the Naira keeps depreciating on a daily basis. The downward trend of our currency can never support airline business and operators are virtually at the mercy of the almighty dollar. For a country that depends on imported goods to keep the economy balanced, common sense will loudly echo adverse naira-to-dollar exchange disparities all the time.

The cost of buying economical, fuel-saving modern aircraft is so high that borrowing from Nigerian banks for that purpose makes no sense. Arik Air that operates new generation jets can testify to the absolved debt burden on its balance sheet. The airline has since been caught between the proverbial Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Right now, the only way out of this dilemma is for government to salvage the situation by either subsidising all imported aviation fuels or allow the airlines to double the current air fare. The cost of mismanaging our economy will always splash on all of us at one point or another. With more functional refineries, we may save our children's future.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201105200071.html

davd:
The corrective measures pointed out by El-Rufair are very correct. Not only the results should be directly sent to central computer in INEC, also, number of accredited electorates should be sent to the central computer before casting of votes.

Truth be told, it should be immediately just published online at the ward level. Once a ward result is complete, why shouldn't everyone in the world then have access to that information?

Send it to INEC too if you like, but the key thing is to PUBLISH the ward voting results immediately and widely!

Very sobering stuff.

Would you say Obasanjo and his group fooled you?
I didn’t understand them, but I laughed and came back hoping there would be no more killings of our people. I want to repeat, I didn’t leave ANPP because somebody gave me money. Please, it has been for a long time, do all the investigations you want, I left ANPP because my people said the reasons I gave them, the primitive politics we were playing, were killing my people whom I wanted to serve. That is why they said wherever I went they would go with me. So, we all moved into PDP, which we did not recognise again. It was not the original PDP that I formed. It had no form; no ideology. Perhaps, the only ideology it had, something that bound the big men in it together, was the possibility of sharing money, and they were always doing that.

Any regrets joining the Governor Suswam-led PDP in Benue?
Yes, when everybody assured me that if I went into PDP they would stop killing my people, they would stop killing young men and cutting their lives short, they would have dialogue, and do good elections. I participated in writing all the constitutions being used in this country today. And I know I presented papers, I presented two major papers on electoral reforms in which I advocated strongly for the introduction of electronic voting system, which I said was the only thing that would stop the killing of my people. I don’t know what happened everywhere, but in my place, the only thing that would stop killing my people, which is the basis for which I continue in politics with the “biggest party” in Africa, as they always say, was free and fair election. I thought God would help us to have an electoral reform that would produce an election that is within the limits of man’s capacity and almost fair, devoid of mass thumb-printing, snatching of ballot boxes and stuffing.

Now, I had the shock of my life, I told myself that I had withdrawn from all elections and I remember how they talked to me and the things they promised me, they said be there as our father. If we do something you think is wrong, you should let us know. And, of course, that ought to be my role at 75. And I have done so and I noticed that young men don’t like old men that would look them in the face and tell them this thing you are doing is wrong. So, people try to relegate me to the background.

I want you to remember that I am still in PDP, I am not an ACN member, but I will tell my party, in this and that cases you are wrong. This funny empty-headed people that hang around those in authority would say, you cannot insult “tuhwa” governor like that. Is that “tuhwa”, you Tiv people? If you are talking to a younger person you are infinitely better qualified than him, and you’ve done this all your life for over 40 years, and the young man is 40, are they crazy?

They expect me to be afraid of saying something because somebody will not give me food?
All these funny things I see in papers that they are removing you as chairman of this, chairman of that, how do you remove me from being 75, if you are not mad? How do you remove me from being the father of politics in Benue, if you are not mad? How do you stop me from being the leader in my village called Kwande? Then you say you want to disgrace and humiliate me, you go and bring nonentities and say here is money, go and give people let them not vote for him. We will show people that he doesn’t have control in his village.

I didn’t go out. You don’t do it with me in Kwande. You can’t do it because I have been there with them for over 50 years and they have not been taken money from anybody, yet they are living. Small kids come here with their big loud speakers and make noise. They say this one is the killer of people, that one is a beater of people, this one is this and that and they ride big cars and go and say, don’t worry Suswam, we are going to deliver this place to you. So, to deliver, you have to kill?

How do you react to the recent killing of former Benue State council Chairman of the NUJ and Media Assistant to ACN governorship candidate, Charles Ayede?
We have entered a very dangerous era, the media should please, help us. If they give you money, take it and spend it, but please, print the truth about Benue. Our people have suffered to a level that some of us will not allow small children God had entrusted us with the responsibility of being leaders in government to them weapons to kill our people. They invited me to join PDP saying that killing would stop. I want you to tell me why you brought me to this part of the world again and lie to me that you are going to stop killing. What is this? I want to know, since you came to my house, I am not looking for publicity; I am not looking for anything. Tell me young man, this is the country we fought for and went to jail for you to come and look after me in my old age, this is barbaric destruction of human life, this horrible murder perpetrated in the name of politics.

We are the people who died, we are the people who went to jail, and we said we have children; we will take everything so that our children will be safe. What is this? What is this murderous thing that people want? Jesus! Is this what I went to jail for? So that you small boys would come and kill yourselves and other decent people, for what? Kill my son, Steve Davis Ugbah, for what? What is this? You wanted to be governor, the people allowed you, you asked to be a member of the Federal House, I allowed you, and they allowed you. I was with my political party, but I assisted you. You were there for eight years, God lifted and brought you to be governor for four years.

For God’s sake, if the electorate of Benue freely, and they are the sovereign people of Benue in whose laps God’s power is deposited, they are the repository of God’s own power on earth, and they say they want to change the government, what is the killing? What are these murders? Young men just going about town being seized and given thorough beating, this one, it was in front of my house in Gboko, he calls himself Crucial, these are your modern names; if you don’t like him calling himself Crucial, call him Abua. Do you have to kill him because he is not in your political party? And I say this kind of behaviour is not good. Could this society survive with the type of pictures you people are seeing, can we bless you?

Talking about political crisis or violence, whichever you choose, what’s your comment on the role of the traditional institution in Benue State?
That silly boy called Alfred Torkula, Tor Tiv says he is the one who curses people. Is this the type of curse he has been bringing upon us? Can he curse? I can curse. Can he talk and refuse this type of carnage? Even the Hausa people that pretend, those of them that pretend to be radical Muslims, when their silly man loses an election, they kill only Christians and burn churches. Benue people, what are you that you kill your own? They kill you up there. The ones that escape and come here, you kill them, for what? Who likes you?

That boy has a wife, that boy has children. How can you kill a human being like that and then get around and threaten old men like me, my God! As long as the Lord lives, I will not do that, this is a cry, crying out for help and I am praying not to have vengeance, but for justice; may the people who won the election, God Almighty, may He return your mandate ACN. We can’t continue like this. This is not what I fought for. This is not what I went to jail for and nobody has the power to stop you from eating. Stop abusing yourself, stop abusing your God, stand up for your right for God’s sake.

As a statesman, what efforts have you made to address this rather worrisome situation beyond the political boundaries of Benue?
If Nigeria is watching what is happening in Benue as a joke, I called Obasanjo and I want to be quoted. I called Obasanjo three days to the election and I said arrange for you, Jonathan Goodluck and me to talk; there is a change in Benue, and if we try to suppress that change we shall have a security problem. I teach intelligence at the university.
I had the opportunity under Babangida to create what was called the security apparatus of this country. So, I know what I am talking about. And I said we need this meeting before this election. I want to expose to you what we PDP are going to do that would destabilize Nigeria, because if there is destabilization, serious ones from among the Tiv of Benue, Nigeria will shake, and we kept giving ourselves appointments three times, we didn’t make the appointments.
And when this thing started. I said please, we must meet. Two days ago, I called Obasanjo, I said you are PDP’s Chairman of Board of Trustees, I told you that something is wrong in Benue.

Let us discuss and stop this thing about your daughter who stood elections for Senate, it’s not war, ACN beat her. You told me you were going to let them have it; you were president four times for God’s sake. Why would such small young men in my state, because they have tasted power and money, the sovereign people of Benue State have decided they are going to change their own leaders, why should you stop them? And when they were stopped, they called him a winner; they call them winners, why are they killing people in this bogus way? Why? I am a card-carrying member of PDP. Is Tor Tiv, Alfred Torkula, a card-carrying member of the PDP? It is because of his encouragements that these boys have gone mad.

But he is your paramount ruler, isn’t it?
I will never call him Tor Tiv again, he was made Tor Tiv in my village, the Unongo village, and I know what happened, which is why I am not going to call him Tor Tiv again. Where was he when they were butchering this boy, and why must it be Kwande always? This thing cannot be tolerated. This thing will not be accepted. This thing will not be allowed to repeat itself except the powers that be in Nigeria don’t care what we Benue people do to ourselves. If that is the case, I will be one of the people and you better quote me, I will be one of the people that would go round and tell my people to defend ourselves.

What is your reaction to the results of the general election declared by INEC?
[size=18pt]ACN won the election; they won it. I am in PDP, we lost it, and it’s not a matter of life and death. Those who are killing people don’t represent all of us in PDP. They don’t represent the President and I know they don’t represent even the soldier. [/size]

What is the way forward?
I think the case has been made for ACN. I told ACN members that were making noise, rushing around my house and telling me they have won the election and so on. Before they started, I said well, you don’t know what we in PDP will do. I said you go ahead and win your election, we shall seize what we shall, go and announce ourselves, and they were laughing at me.

ACN won Benue governorship election –Unongo
From ROSE EJEMBI, Makurdi
Sunday, May 22, 2011


Not afraid of being sanctioned by his party, Second Republic Minister of Steel, Wantaregh Paul Unongo, told newsmen in Makurdi, Benue State capital, that although he was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) won the recent governorship election in the state. The elder statesman also blamed his party for the killing of some youths in the state. He speaks on these and other national issues. Excerpts…

You have been quiet for some time. Why are you breaking your silence?
Today, you have come. I hope I won’t disappoint you. What I will do is to tell you why I am relevant in Nigeria and will remain relevant till you people put me in the ground. So, I make comments that allow discussions in the process and also I allow people to ask me my views about what I think. I am only 75 years young. I think that is a good age. I think I have participated in every single thing in Nigeria and I think I have contributed very creditably in the evolution of Nigeria and the Nigerian political system.

I am competent, eminently competent to make statements on its growth and problems and what is happening in it. Many things have happened in this country of late and I always refused to give press conferences because, when people come to me for abrupt press conferences as if I want publicity, I think I have had enough publicity when I was out there with you. But I just want those who are interested in knowing about me and how I am feeling. In fact, I was very happy when I heard you were coming to the village.

I thought you would see what I am doing. I am not one of those retired. I will retire the day I die. So, I am strongly active, enjoying what I am doing in my village. I make relevant questions available to friends and they make relevant questions available to me and I answer them. I thank you very much for giving me the honour of coming to my house for this interactive session.

What is your take on the current development in the political landscape of PDP, the party you belong?
Considering things that have happened in Nigeria, I want to let my views known because I have refused to be in the background by attaching myself to a political party. By wanting to be in the background, I shouldn’t have attached myself to a political party. Those of you who know my history, you knew why I came to attach myself to a political party, the ‘dominant’ party or the party in power, PDP. At the creation of PDP, I believe my brain created it and I registered it also with the then INEC. I was the first to bring that thing about.

Then my younger brothers made some games and tricks that affected the ideological orientation of the very PDP I formed; contradictory to the behaviour of my kids, who came and took the PDP and made it a different thing, so I withdrew from it and didn’t go to court. I went and collected my money from INEC and they took their PDP and made it something that had nothing to do today with liberal democracy. I think based on social democracy since we have been crying for a long time that Nigerian political system did not have an ideological orientation. So, I wanted to make that contribution by starting a political party that would have an ideological orientation that can accommodate liberal and social democrats.

Why didn’t you correct the ills in the PDP rather than leaving the house you built?
I was quite prepared to entertain modalities of moving the people along the line of manifestos we gave. What is the thing you choose, are you going to be leftist? Are you going to the left or to the right, or centre? Some people would be in the centre or the left, some would be left and some would be absolute left.

So, I discovered that after this thing was split up and the PDP came, it was nothing that we wanted to bring dispute into the Nigerian political practice. So, I went away and remained in approximation of what was, what we had for the people, the NPP metamorphosed through a lot of things to become ANPP. And back home, which is where you are, the schisms and the practice polarized politics to such an extent that a lot of killing could take place. We insisted we would be different and we became like the official and opposition party, and the big parties that were in power didn’t like it.

Every time we did an election from the point of view of people watching and seeing the behaviour of the electorate, who are the repository of power, I notices there was resentment with people that came into power both in Nigeria and in the states, they actually assumed sovereignty over the people.

So, I feel I am rejected in that at every election we ended up short-changed. We won, they announced somebody else, and then they started the practice of killing and they killed a lot of people. I was at the centre because I took the simplest way I could handle, but my people love me so much. When I won elections and they were taken from me, the people got so angry that they didn’t want to let them go. And, of course, the big people that were running government started getting frightened about my ideas and they were very worried that if I came into power, they believed I was going to pack everybody and send them to jail, especially those who were stealing money, and that I would not allow them to steal. So, they fought and killed people in my local government, Kwande.

In that election, the government in power wanted every thing from every local government and so on, and then they wanted to humiliate everybody, they went there and humiliated them. But they were not satisfied because they couldn’t win even a councillorship seat in Kwande. So, they held Kwande people and me responsible and there was a lot of massacre as they raided Kwande. Of course, the Federal Government and the federal troops assisted them and they murdered 1,500 people in my local government just for me.

With all these atrocities committed against your people by the PDP government, why did you still choose not to decamp?
I felt the time had arrived to stop the killings, if indeed the philosophy and assumption is that I love my people and I wanted to serve them. Persistently, in 1983, I won elections, but was not allowed, in 2003 I won election landslide. I am so happy the current governor confirmed that to me and actually volunteered the information. He was the one that actually successfully did the mago mago business for them to be able to tell the people that they won the election, but told me I won. Of course, the boys that did the election also told me.

So, after the 2004 massacre, I turned back and told people in public that I was sick and don’t want to be governor of dead people. I didn’t want to rule dead people. So, I said I would stop. People told me I shouldn’t stop, that what would benefit our people in Benue would be to forget my pride and join PDP. So, I made it public, it took me sometime, about four years, I made a public declaration at a public square after a lot of consultations with my people and they gave me conditions. To leave, our party would literally be killed because ANPP was killing it by going into the PDP fellowship. I had very serious discussions with the then Obasanjo government, who assured me that there would be no more killing, so I joined the PDP.

The principal reason I gave at the public arena was that I wanted peace, I wanted the Tiv people to know that politics in Nigeria is not played the way they play politics, and that I had studied the politics of Nigeria and what we were doing was going to pull us back. And the likes of Obasanjo and then Yar’Adua were so happy that their problem in Benue was over now that the only opposition man had made up his mind to work for peace.

Nice article.

How they figure out how to wrestle the rail networks in the SW from the FG and rehabilitate them, I don't know.

Will be interesting to see.

These guys love leaving boobytraps for the governors who succeed them

Heh. Very dumb folks. Really a good thing none of you have any say in Lagos's decisionmaking.

Obiagu1:
Keep deceiving yourself, by the time Tinubu quits Lagos State, the debt will hit $1 trillion.

Heh. Alright, I get your agenda now. Carry on; I'll just know to ignore your posts.

^-- Pop is more like 18-20 million.

Revenue, I'm not what the amount is. . . in the neighborhood of $2-3 billion/year.

Obiagu1:
Who's buying bonds?

Err whoever is buying the bonds they offered. I don't understand your question.

Outright buyout or nothing, it's a decision to be made by Lagosians else their tax will hit 60-80% just to service the debt owned by the state.

What mathematical analysis went into this projection of yours? Or did you pull it out of your @ss?

Hehe. Feel free to buy Lagos State bonds. The more buyers, the merrier. I actually wondered if it is listed on some sort of exchange. . .

manny4life:
WOW,


At least Lagos is making the money and if they repaying their debt, then good. Debt is good only if you're paying it on time; that help strengthen your credibility reduces potential risk factors.

Well, paying it on time is a good idea, yes. But I think debt makes sense in other circumstances. If you can borrow at 10% and get returns at 20% (for example), it makes a ton of sense to borrow.

This isn't really the right analogy for governments, but sort of illustrates the point.

Dubai and most of the first world were largely built on debt.

step1:
There can not be any deal with the SE because they have nothing to offer the SW, it is very simple. I don't want to go into details but first can you suggest what you want from the party or SE for the seat of the speaker.

Right, I know the SE has nothing to offer us. But the PDP might.

This is what I suspect the ACNs strategy is. . . sacrifice this speakership for some other sort of compensation. E.g., federal projects in the zone, etc.

I absolutely don't have a problem with this strategy; it actually isn't a bad idea. And in this matter, the ACN and Igbos have a common interest (seeing PDP SW suffer.)

For the record though, that the ACN thinks something is good for their party doesn't mean it is necessarily good for the zone. Losing the speakership without any compensation is still a positive for the ACN, but imo bad for the SW.

This is where most of these ACN supporters in the SW and I will differ. . . their agenda is slightly different from mine (though our agendas overlap 95% of the time.)

Anyway, long story short, let us not rewrite history and pretend that this position was not zoned to the SW.

step1:
There are two things here for the SW/SE and Nigeria

1 I believe the SW should take this position since in Nigeria every region is looking after its interest

2 The SW should not take the position since the north just want to divide the South by putting a SW speaker

@ekt_bear

I really think you should think of option (2) properly. Getting this position has not benefit what-so-ever to the progress of SW. Onlytruth is making a lot of sense.

As should be clear, I don't care if the SW retains the position or not. What I oppose is us giving it away for free. There was an agreement reached before the election, was there not? If you want to change the parameters of this decision, then those negatively affected by it must be compensated.

Simple as that.

I cannot use fear of the North wanting to divide the South (as if there ever has been a political south ) to give away my zone's rights for free. At least sell the rights off for the proverbial pottage

@Gbawe: You can exchange it for something else. I have no problems with that. But if "reject" means give it away for free, I am opposed to that.

I don't give away my own personal property for free. If I don't want something, I'll sell it off.

I expect my zone to do the same (assuming we don't want this position, truly.)

Onlytruth:
@ekt_bear

Stop trying to deceive yourself.
If the so called understanding was reached, why is the National Chairman of the PDP now zoned to the North?

WTF?

Here is your own Igbo brother on the National Chairmanship matter:

South-East and zoning
My position in the first place is that issue of the National Chairmanship is not part of what the South East needs or want. It is the prerogative of the South East to complete their tenure as the national Chairman of PDP which would end in March 2012. So, it is not a matter of whether the South-East wants national chairman or not. It is a fact the national chairmanship of the PDP is still in the South-East. It is yet to be removed from the South-East.

So, the South-East will take their rightful position of national chairman and still preside over the caucus that will determine who gets what in Nigeria vis-a-vis the PDP. So, people who are talking about the speakership, or deputy president or president of the Senate are completely missing the point. The fact is that it is by right the South-East that should preside over who gets what. God has made it so. And nobody would take it away from us.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/politics/2011/may/20/politics-20-05-2011-002.html


Anyway, it is what it is. It appears that the PDP has decided to retain the status quo ex ante (modulo some minor variations, I suppose), and thus zoning is still in force.

Whether your zone retains that particular position isn't really my concern; I can only be concerned about the promises made by the PDP to my own zone.

Am I misreading things here?

Didn't the PDP zone positions before the elections?

I could have sworn that this was the case:

Other positions are the North West, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the North Central, the national chairman of the party, while the South-South produced Secretary to the Government of the Federation. The zoning formula was retained, but swapped after eight years of Obasanjo’s presidency. The Presidency rotated to the North West, Vice President to the South-South, Senate President to North Central, Speaker of House of Representatives to the South West, National chairman of the party to the South East and Secretary to the Government of the Federation to the North East.

The demise of President Umaru Yar’Adua before the completion of his first four-year tenure and the removal of the national chairman of the party on two different occasions affected the zoning arrangement. Vice President Goodluck Jonathan had to step in as President to complete the tenure of Yar’Adua, while the position of the National chairman of the party moved from the South East to the North West, albeit, on temporary basis. After the presidential primaries, which produced the candidature of Goodluck Jonathan, a political understanding was believed to have been reached to let the status quo remain, including the occupants.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features/powergame/2011/may/01/powergame-may-05-2011-001.htm

Is this not an agreement to retain the zoning formula?

Or am I somehow misinterpreting this article?

Or was there some hidden condition in the zoning agreement requiring X PDP positions/Y PDP presidential votes or something

@Gbawe: You make some good points. But:

1) Regardless of who the PDP picks, will it not be a mediocrity? Or are the alternate candidates being thrown about some paragons of excellence?
2) I do not have to be a PDP member for me to call them out as liars if they break their word, must I? (and for the record, I'm not a member of any political party; my loyalties lie with the SW zone.)
3) To the extent that the PDP has the ability to determine the next speaker, let it be someone from the SW. If they want to go back on their word and give it to someone else (again, assuming they have the power to do this), then the SW must be compensated.

More info here:
http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2001339.html

15 year rail cars aren't so bad. They should have another 10-15 years life in them, and he (or more accurately, the concessionaire, I guess) can get them pretty cheap.

Seems like a pretty good way to go about it.

@Gbawe: "Amala" politics is absolutely irrelevant. Agreements must be honored. If there was an agreement, even if it was with OBJ and his SW PDP brigade, then it should be honored. End of story.

Look, I understand why you as an ACN man want to see them lose this position. And I don't even mind having it being traded for something of more value, if this is indeed part of the ACNs strategy.

But it would be very foolish to renounce what is your zone's right just due to fear/dislike of OBJ. Sell it off if you want, trade it in for something for more value.

But the position belongs to the SW. And I'm unwilling to see it lost for nothing.

Dede1:
You are a fool of irredeemable case. All I have shown you came from the link the lamb dung such as you cited. The Supreme Court decisions do not necessarily set aside all USA laws or directives pertaining to a case or subject, Olodo.

You don't have a brain; that you used this "US passport required by dual citizens" as evidence to support your position made this very clear to me.

Thus, there is no reason for you and I to interact.

We are done talking. You are welcome to have the final word, however.

The long and short of it is that whatever agreements were made before the election (in particular, the idea that the zoning formula agreed to should stand) should be honored.

SW folk rightly point out that the Speakership is unlikely to do much for the zone. ACN SW folk I suspect don't want to see the PDP SW retain this position. However, none of that is really relevant.

The PDP should not break agreements it had before the election. Especially if one of them was that the SW should get the Speakership. Simple as that.