₦airaland Forum

[quote author=Rhino.5dm link=topic=263214.msg8319518#msg8319518 date=1305383803]^ Am right now in PH live! Am trekking between Ust to Agip junction. Where do want me to snap and paste for proof?
Just mention anywhere.
Am invincible![/quote]Looks like your challenge has not been taken up. Hrm. . .

@kandiikane: I thought we appreciated you already and also gave you some things to help you on your way  


At some of the rest of ya'll. . . I dunno why you are trying to racialize/dramatize this. All this "colonial mentality" nonsense you bring up is silly. If you as a black person go to China/India/Mexico City and speak fluently there, people will think it is pretty cool. It isn't that they are insecure or have "slave mentality."

Stop dramatizing simple things.

Princek12:
try to join the Yoruba Youth organization. http://yorubayouth.org/old%20index.html

They have more resources for people who want to learn Yoruba. I would have gone to their convention this year but will be unable to do so because I have an exam in July.

Damn. I didn't know about that. I'll join and see about attending. Thanks!

Princek12:
Yes. The court interpretation stuff for Yoruba language is not a full time gig because the demands for it in America is low; you are called as needed. only Spanish interpreters have full time gig for obvious reasons. You are right--learning it is easier if you have someone around it. Hopefully Rosetta Stone will create a Yoruba version.

I've never tried Rosetta Stone. Have you tried Pimsleur before? The idea is that you learn via repetition, purely via audio (no computer/textbook stuff really needed. Though they have some small exercises at the end of each 30 minute lesson.)

I used it to learn rapidly improve my Spanish in a few weeks. At my peak (4 years ago), I could go to the Mexican market and pretty much hold my own. My language skills have decayed now though.

Anyway, it is a pretty amazing system. If someone made a Yoruba version of it, I'd buy it.

@Princek12:

Yeah I know about Bishop Crowther. Haven't read his biography though.

I have a dictionary (http://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-English-English-Yoruba-Modern-Practical-Dictionary/dp/0781809789), as well as the instructional book I linked to earlier.

Thing is I have no one to speak to here. . . not too many Yoruba folk where I live. That is what makes it somewhat hard.

Didn't know you did court interpretation stuff; that actually isn't bad at all.

I'm trying to convince my buddy to lead a Saturday school here. . . hopefully round up a bunch of other people in the area and get them to pay like $10-20/lesson. Much easier to learn if you have other people with the same goal, rather than just learning by yourself 

Interview here with Gov Fayemi:
http://ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47846:this-election-has-allowed-for-re-integration-of-the-southwest&catid=73:policy-a-politics&Itemid=607

Some excerpts:

Agric/Industry:

We believe we cannot do it alone; we need to leverage on the strength of one another, especially with Lagos as a huge market, for example.

If we say we want to engage in a common agriculture policy, clearly we know that Lagos is not a farming zone, but Lagos has a market and for those of us who have the farm. It should be possible for us to work out an arrangement that allows every single component unit in the zone committed to modernising and commercialising agriculture, for example, to benefit from the huge population of Lagos.

We could also look at the industrial development framework. There are people who will benefit from organising their market and industry here, because labour is clearly cheaper here in Ekiti or Osun or Edo than Lagos. That would help us to address the rural-urban drift.

Transport:

Talk about transportation, we have two big challenges that we think coming together in a regional economic development zone will help us tackle. One of the tasks that will be passed on to our members in the National Assembly is to ensure that this inhibition placed on deregulating rail transportation is removed.

As at now, we cannot do rail transportation; we still look forward to having a regional rail, and that does not mean we want to abandon the national rail. In fact, we would take a cue from the existing national rail lines to achieve our objective of providing rail services from Lagos, through Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti and Edo, because at end of the day, that can also connect back to Kogi, Kwara and Abuja.

Power:

Come to electricity, we have the same agenda. There is this distribution company of the PHCN (Power Holding Company of Nigeria) that is being deregulated and privatised. We have argued that generation and transmission of power can remain a federal issue, but in terms of distribution, it should be possible for us to take care of our own electricity.

We have been talking to the Ondo and Osun states governors to put together an Independent Power Project (IPP) that will benefit from a gas supply in Ondo, which can be sited in Ore, but with the capacity to distribute power to the neighbouring states.

I sit on the IPP board on behalf of the Southwest and every day, we talk about building new plants, but the impact is yet to be felt by our people.

@kandiikane: Yeah I was about to say. . . if you are from Salone it won't be hard for you to learn Yoruba. Heck, you might be of Yoruba descent yourself, for all we know.

kandiikane:
Btw, I am trying to learn Yoruba

There is this free FSI course that the US Diplomats use (used?) to learn Yoruba:
http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Yoruba%20Basic

Also this book on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Yoruba-Hippocrene-Kayode-Fakinlede/dp/0781810698

Might be helpful.

koruji:
PDP is actually a military government in disguise.

+1000

You've hit the nail on the head.

@Princek12: I know man. I don't really speak myself, to be honest. . . I understand probably 90%+ of spoken, but cannot say more than bits and pieces.

But there are some places where the American-born Yoruba are pretty good. Suburbs of DC, there is a large enough Yoruba community. So people can at least speak a bit there. Some places in Chicago and NYC area, I hear that the same is true too.

What we need to have is Saturday school or something where people can learn the language. It is kind of a hassle trying to learn it by yourself (at least in my experience.)

kandiikane:
@ekt, I am sorry but is Yoruba the most influential language in Africa?

Not claiming it is. But for very selfish reasons, I'd like to see it offered more  

Truthfully though, it is spoken in Nigeria, Benin Republic, and Togo. And there are some influences in countries like Sierra Leone. And of course Cuba, Brazil, and most of these afro-Latino cultures.

So I think it is a good choice if you want to teach an African language.

scholes0:
^^ Its usually  Yoruba Versus Swahili in US universities.

Yeah that Swahili nonsense pisses me off  

I want a Yoruba language class to improve my skills, but instead they offer languages like Dogon, Swahili. Not really useful for me. I'd even not mind learning Hausa or some other major West African language. But they don't offer. . .

^-- Well said, bro.

I also hope that this motivates more US universities to offer Yoruba as the African language of choice.

*subscribes*

chibest5:
Investigation Experts, what will the owner of that Car do  with it after 36 years? very irrelevant discovery.

Drive it?

[img]http://l.yimg.com/i/ng/sh/carenthu/20110513/11/2328063526-stolen-car-returned-36-years.jpg?x=566&y=329&q=80&sig=riMRSGS5dzQjZHBtHFHpAw--[/img]

^-- That is a very sexy car.

Impressive

Interesting analysis. But I guess he has incentive to upset the old power base in the SE, since this furthers his own interest.

I'm glad that the states have made a united front on this demand. May it come to pass.

koruji:
PDP will not give up power without a fight!!!

True. But neither will the ACN. May require two years in court, but they won't quit.

Cosign on the calls for edo.girl to post more. She is very good (and has probably owned me in this discussion so far.) Still, I'd like her to respond to my earlier post before I throw rail out of the window.

Regarding employment in agriculture. . . well, high-tech agric as done in the Western world doesn't really create that many jobs. It is highly mechanized, has high yields per acre, and requires a lot of capital (so not that accessible to your average guy). All of this means a smaller # of workers to produce say a unit of rice in Mississippi (for example) than in Nigeria.

In short, agric won't create enough jobs. At least, assuming you want high-tech agric that will be competitive (w/o subsidies and import restrictions) against the Western world, Brazil, Thailand, etc.

Only way I can see to provide massive employment and improved standards of living is manufacturing. Which is why I place such a high priority on electricity and good transportation (rail being just one way to achieve this latter goal), even in rural states like my Ekiti.

Lol. Actually kind of a cool idea.

zstranger:
First of all, I am surprised that you are unable to see Katz's point clearly.

I see his point, but disagree with it. His point is, "too hard to say who derives the benefit." I'm saying, "Yes, we don't have #s, but we can make educated guesses." Correct me if I'm wrong regarding his point, though.

Secondly, The Economist article you posted was talking about the environmental impact of subsidies removal WRT to how much is consumed on a per leisure/unnecsaary consumption basis, not WRT to how much necessary/unavoidable amount consumed. Their point is that subsidy increases usage, which in turn adds to atmospheric carbondioxide. There was no analysis per se on the impact of subsidy-removal on the survivability of the poor man and its impact on job creation, and stimulation of the economy.

Their point if I am not mistaken is: remove subsidies and people would be forced to use less gas which will in-turn reduce pollution.

Right, the article is primarily about environmental stuff. But what I quoted discusses how some of the reasoning used to justify these subsidies ("this petrol subsidy helps poor market women, etc, etc" don't hold. You can then use that to find other studies/surveys that come to the same conclusion. Same phenomenon (of oil subsidies primarily benefiting the rich rather than the poor) seems to show up in other places (China, Indonesia, India).

Well, like Katz said, this is nothing more than conjecture.

It is what it is. . . on some level all we are doing here is conjecturing. But I don't have access to the data for Nigeria, so all I can do is to make educated guesses. . . using my intuition about how things work and the additional information provided by studies in other countries. Granted, it'd be better to have hard data for Nigeria. But I don't have that. . . none of us do, really.

But even if it were true, on a class/social economic status basis, the poor, including lower middle-class,  definitely consume more liters of petrol than the rich, No?

Cumulatively or per capita? Cumulatively might be true, but is sort of irrelevant. The question is, on a per capita basis, does your poor man consume more or less in petrol per year than a wealthy man? (I hope you see why cumulative is irrelevant btw. If we have $1000 to share, 100 poor people and 1 rich man, give the poor people $600 to share, and the rich man $400, then that more money has gone to the poor (100 poor people getting $600) than the rich (one rich man getting $400) doesn't capture how this is probably a bad policy for helping the poor.)

First of all, the notion that 85%-90% of the benefits go to the wealthy is not true, at least not in Nigeria's.

See above.

Even if that was true, looking at the big picture, it is all good;  I'd rather have an Adenuga who has more money to hire personal drivers, pilots, and tons of college grads than an Adenuga who spends more on petrol,  but hire less.

Nope, I strongly disagree. If it true that 85% of the benefit goes to the wealthy, then you seriously must question the policy. It isn't as if the secondary benefits you bring up ("hire personal drivers, pilots", etc) are unique to this particular way of spending $4.2 billion. If I spend $4.2 billion on some combination of education, healthcare, transportation, I'll think I'll generate secondary benefits just as high as that of a petrol subsidy. This quote of yours from Aganga supports this, btw.

Katsumoto:
Again, you are playing with numbers that can not be substantiated. Who derives the most benefit from the subsidy can only ascertained by studying work and life patterns. Some rich people live and work on the Island and may not have too much of a social life. A poor man (a driver for instance) who lives in iju and works 6 days a week in Ikoyi spends significantly more time on the road than his boss and spends most of his income on transportation, is more dependent on the subsidy than his boss. I dont like playing with numbers that are nothing more than a guess because they don't really tell us anything.

In the absence of other information (a plot of petrol consumption versus income, for example), there is nothing to do but make educated guesses.

You can pick out some isolated examples of rich folk who somehow spend no money on petrol, but this is going to be an anomaly, not representative.

Anyway, I think even w/o data to back this up immediately, most people will agree that wealthier folk consume more liters of petrol  (either directly or indirectly) per capita than poor folk.

Throw on top of that the claim in that Economist article about most of the benefit going to the wealthy, as well as various other studies one can pull up quickly. . . and it isn't hard to figure out who benefits more in Nigeria from fuel subsidies.

Secondly, you continue to ignore the fact that corruption is unlikely to permit the poor man, who is going to be affected by the subsidy removal the most, from enjoying the services that may be instituted with the funds from the subsidy removal. There have been several oil windfalls in the last 25 years; I can tell you with all confidence that most, if not all, of it has not been declared. I remember a few years ago when the Nigerian budget was based on $60 per barel and oil shot to $100; The revenue derived DID not increase. I believe it was during the Isreali/Lebanon war. Why is it so difficult for you to accept that Nigerian administrators will simply embezzle the funds. In any case, I will stop making this point to you.

If they'll embezzle it regardless, at any level, then there is no reason to comment on Nigerian policy period. After all, everything will be embezzled. . . so what is the point? Why even bother talking about anything Nigeria does policy-wise, if all choices only lead to corruption?

No far right journalist would have written that article calling for subsidy to be removed so as to punish the rich. Most likely a far left journalist. I tend to judge articles based on the content of the said article rather than judge the publication itself. Not everyone journalist at the Economist is a centrist, left winger or right winger.

Right. It doesn't make sense to focus on the inclination of the writer, but instead judge the merit of the arguments in the article itself.

[quote author=aloy/emeka link=topic=666906.msg8316900#msg8316900 date=1305334362]Fashola is slowly turning into Buhari: This is another sledge hammer from him:

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-666172.0.html[/quote]In that case, sai Fashola

Katsumoto:
Yeah I know; Light crude comes mainly from countries such as Nigeria and Libya. I only mentioned because I wanted to illustrate that there is a global market and that most countries buy/sell at the same price and that different prices at the pumps is a result of different fiscal policies.

OK. But hopefully you see that oil is NOT subsidized in the US.

No it does not make sense because the poor are dependent on goods and services that use gas. Taking away subsidy means that transportation companies will charge the poor when they take buses. It also means that the price of food will go up astronomically. The poor spend most of their income on food and transportation. An increase in gas or energy prices affects everyone.

The subsidy will affect the rich in a way that the rich man decides to buy a 3 liter engine car instead of a 4 liter. It affects a poor man in that he has to eat less because he MUST go to work and the only room he has to manoeuvre is his eating habits. You have to be careful when reading papers written by people either to the far right or far left. They don't engage their brains at times when making an argument.

If the subsidy is removed and just vanished with nothing replacing it, then yes, there would be hardship on the common man.

However. . . there are a # of different ways to look at the actual impact.

Let's be a bit concrete. Assuming that the $350 million/month quoted is representative of a year, Nigeria spends $4.2 billion/year on petrol subsidies. Population of 150 million. If we say that 70%+ of this benefit goes to above-average income earners (probably not unreasonable a guess), your typical poor guy sees $16.80/year in benefit from this subsidy ($28 per person per year averaged over everybody.)

Now, are you very sure that this $4.2 billion cannot be spent in a way that delivers more value to your typical below-average income guy (if that is indeed your goal)? Schools, hospitals, better transportation (e.g., rather than taking 8-10 hours to drive the 330 miles Lagos to Abuja, I'm driving 4-5 hours on a good highway)?

Regarding "far right", I don't think most people consider The Economist to be a far right newspaper. Fiscally conservative, yes. Far right, no.

i dey laff one more time