₦airaland Forum

19. eschew violence

13. Campaign of callumny
14. The president urged Nigerians to. . .
15. Pursue dialogue
16. Unafrican
17. even the holy bible says. . .
18. x point agenda

betrani:
The Antidote to this poison " Boko Haram" is for us to start bombin mosques! Yesterdays bomb attack was a distraction to make it look as if they are not jst particular about christians! By bombin mosques I tell u we will be sniffing out 5% each for each mosque members of boko haram! Idiots!

Wow, there are a lot of rètarded people on Nairaland today. Is it because of the festive period?

LeoMax:
There is time for everything BokoHaram, when the right time came , Al Awaki, Osame Bin Laden and other greatest terrorists were killed.  Boko Haram is a conglomerate of some poverty stricken, politically-disfavored, Hausa accented, dark-complexioned illiterate Northen hausa people who are not equal to an average Niger Deltan by any standard. I curse you today, you people will never never meet up with the brains and resources of Niger Delta, cos you guyz are less than humans. We got Oil & Gas, you guyz got desert sands. Fucck You people. Nomads !!! You people are good at opening my gates, and mending my shoes.

This is completely uncalled for. Judging by your post, you're a tribalist bigot and no better than the Boko Haram footsoldiers.

FYI, the majority of northerners have nothing to do with the bombings and don't support them in any way. Most of them are just ordianry people trying to live their lives and feed their children in peace.

Go and spread your hatred somewhere else.

My advice is that all christians should stay at home tonight. Or at the very least, avoid all the megachurches and stick to smaller ones. There's nothing going on in church that is worth getting killed over.

Anybody who is banking on divine protection should think about the innocent children who got blown up on christmas day and know that god is not going to protect anybody. This is the new reality, we have to deal with it.

Beaf:
That is NOT an ideology. You really are missing the point.

Right, so you don't want to hear about any concrete plans or time-bound objectives. You just want me to start blowing some useless grammer like "national integration" or "social transmogrification".

If grammer had any value, Nigeria would have the highest GDP in the world. Continue your pointless thread without me.

clementcro:
I can now conclude that most of the people who have commented on this post are ANTI-CHRIST. They do not have the knowledge of God, and because of that they said God doesn't exist. Because you dont have a knowledge about something, that doesnt mean it doesnt exist.


I pray that God forgives all who are in support of this TOPIC.

My advice to Seun, the owner of Nairaland, I would advice you delete this post, dont be happy because it is bringing traffic to your site. Do not allow them to use this site against God. God is not happy with all these insult people are casting on his name.

That is my advice,


Good bye.

So just because some posters disagree with your religion, you want Seun to delete the thread? I wonder what you would think if they started censoring the anti-Juju, anti-islam or anti-Jehovah's witness threads.

Stop being a fanatic and learn to tolerate opposing views. You are just one small step away from being just like Boko Haram.

goshen360:
Correct, he will not be strike dead. God we talk about is Love, not willing that any should perish but come to repentance and know Him. Trust me, i have denied there is no God before in my ignorance.

If God is love and he doesn't want people to perish, how come he allows Boko Haram to blow up his followers on christmas morning? Why is he allowing innocent children, who were only there to worship him, to perish in such a horrible, painful way?

The fact is if god exists then he knew about the bombings and could have prevented them, yet he sat by and did nothing. He didn't even intervene afterwards to help the wounded. Had any human being behaved like this, nobody would hesitate to condemn him/her as a heartless, cruel ässhole. And yet, because it's god, you guys are jumping up to make excuses for him.

You cannot have a double standard for what is good and what is evil. If god exists, then based on his behavior on the 25th, we can only come to the conclusion that he is pure evil. If he doesn't exist, then the question doesn't arise.

ejikemeuwa:
pls guys if u got nothing to say, save it for sth else, if u really know GOD, then you will know the import of wat u are saying, be careful

People have been denying the existence of god since the dawn of time. Yet, other than the occasions when they get attacked by religious fanatics, nothing happens to them. There are never any lightening bolts, the earth never swallows them and they never turn to salt. Why is that?

MariAmara:
First of all, who are you that God has to prove Himself to you? You're nothing but a mere, empty mortal that will die, decay and rot away and be forgotten with history. Men more greater than you have all whined in the past about God "proving" Himself to them, and they all died without answers, how much more you, a Nairalander looking for his ten minutes of fame by blaspheming against His Creator. I laugh in pidgin!
Keep waiting for proof, my dear novice poster. God is not a magician, He will only prove Himself to His children; the people who believe and accept Him into their hearts as their Lord and Savior. He will only prove Himself to people who are READY to believe, not people who the Devil has hardened their hearts to believe, people like you. You will never understand because you have failed to accept the truth, you have been brainwashed by science and its cohorts who confuse you each passing day. Nobody with such a narrow-minded thinking like you can fathom the power and the supernatural entity of God, so forget it. Keep drowning in your abyss of ignorance because evidently your case is a lost one.

You've gone off track. This thread isn't about god proving himself to anyone. It's about his apparent failure to protect his people in a church, on christmas day, from murderous "unbelievers".

If god exists, and is omniscient and omnipotent, it means that he knew about the attacks before they happened and could have easily prevented them but he chose not to. As a result, dozens of people including innocent children are dead.

I don't think it's out of place for people to ask why. And I don't see why christians need to resort to insults just because people are asking reasonable questions.

Beaf:
I am not interested in what Jonathan is doing. Rather, I am asking that people apply their brains in a non-partisan way. I assume that is not above you?

Sadly, your suggestions are just more of the same unfortunate cut and nail policies that got us into a hole.
What we need is a path that is grounded in philosophy and ideology, not more populist claptrap. I don't want this thread dragged down the same Oshodi style crap that begins nowhere and ends up nowhere.

What philosophy or ideology do you propose? Its as simple as that.

What's populist about massive retrenchment of civil servants? That word doesn't mean what you think it means. And please tell me when exactly any government used my "cut and nail policies" i.e. reducing wasteful spending and diverting the money to infrastructure development. Nigeria has always been a big government country.

You keep on asking what ideology I propose when I have already made it clear: smaller government, economic stimulus through investment in infrastructure, and judicial/police reform.

@ Tom Ford.

Reforming the police should be a top priority because of Boko Haram. The police has totally failed to deal militancy by BH, MEND and even OPC. They have totally failed to enforce law and order and to prosecute even petty crimes. They commit far more crimes than they prevent, from harrasing and extorting transport workers to torturing and murdering people in police stations. They have lost all respect in the eyes of the public.

Worst of all, they are totally useless in dealing with large crowds. If Nigerians start coming out in numbers to protest subsidy removal or the security situation, or something, it is almost certain the police will start teargassing and shooting people.

A country that cannot enforce public order is finished. And Nigeria is dangerously close to breaking down into total anarchy. I don't think our olodo president has any idea how close to the brink we are.

Another reason is that if Nigeria is to develop economically, we need to have a justice system that works. That way, businesses can prosecute dishonest staff, and contracts between small businesses can be enforced. Our useless police costs the economy billions every year by not fufilling their basic obligations.

Beaf:
^
Dude, I am not a PDP man, please learn to tackle issues without attaching sillyness.
Aside that, all you have done is suggest anarchy without a thought as to how that anarchy will be realised. No nation can be run by applying Oshodi methods, thats what has got Nigeria where it is anyway.

Call it what you will, but my plan makes more sense than whatever it is that Jonathan is doing presently.

A railway will spur economic activity and provide badly needed jobs for tens of thousands of potential Boko Haram recruits in the north, and in all the communities along it's path. The new policemen will improve the security situation as well as general law and order (I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Nigeria is ridiculously underpoliced). The retrenched civil servants make very little contribution to the economy and will not be missed. The same goes for the sacked senior policemen.

Everybody who knows anything about economics knows that spending on infrastructure stimulates economic growth. Even the pathologically dull Jonathan knows that we need to increase capital spending. Yet, when someone puts forward a plan to rapidly shift resources to where they can actually do some good, you call it "Oshodi methods". Well maybe we should just continue to do the same dumb shît we've been doing for the past 13 years and wait for Jebus to come down from heaven and save us.

Beaf:
And how do you hope to achieve these things out of thin air? All you are doing is scratching the surface, the problem is deeper and it is that Nigeria is a hurriedly knocked together entity that lacks the sort of deep philosophical grounding a countries like say, the US have.

The only solution to Nigeria's problems is an end to chaos, it is not ill-fitting subsidies or throwing money at problems in an ad hoc way as you have requested. You cannot simply begin building roads and bridges, there has to be a clear-cut reason why. Every road, bridge, school etc must be built to secure a clear-cut, well thought out, predefined purpose; otherwise money would have been thrown into a chasm to disappear forever and further add to the chaos that is at the root of our problems.

What Nigeria needs, even before spending a dime, is a defining national ideology that can only be born out of a brand new citizen-state contract.
The route to the brand new citizen-state contract is a wholesale constitutional change that will redefine how Nigeria is made up; what responsibilities states, LG's and the FG hold toward the citizen and what is expected in return from the citizen. True federalism.
Right Now, there is no bond between citizen and state in Nigeria as there is in other countries; Nigeria to most Nigerians is at best a piece of land on which either they or their parents were born, it is this feeling of not belonging that feeds the ever growing ogre of chaos that is the Nigerian system.

There has to be a defined framework a country works to and its citizens need a definition of their nationality that reinforces their self-worth, belonging and personal philosophies of existence. The people are what matter, they determine the national psyche and its ability to produce and innovate; empty bridges and soulless roads do not matter. Ask mao's China; out of perennially embarrassing droughts, farmines and pestilences that killed millions in the 70's, they have stormed to World leadership a generation later. It is the people and their contract with the state that matters, not bridges and other lifeless things.
A simple test for most; will you die for Nigeria?

This is the thrust of what I stated in the original article:

Throwing money at bridges and roads etc without a backing national philosophy will only see us churning water without results. Development is not a surface thing, it requires deep thinking and application. It requires strong institutions imbued with the enduring philosophies and ideology of the state. Strong institutions outlast individuals and fads, they embody the standards that banish chaos, enforce due process and unshackle creativity to explode; because even the efforts of the lowly are guaranteed to be rewarded without a wink and and a bribe.

Spoken like a true PDP man. You guys are vey good at blowing grammer to explain why you're not doing anything tangible. You ask me how I'd achieve the things I listed out of thin air? Here's how.

1. Roll back the salaries and allowances of all government officials to 2003 levels. This is largely a symbolic gesture but very important. It's not as difficult to do as people say. Just get the RMAFC to change the salaries, threaten to prosecute any legislator or admin worker involved in paying or recieving the new salaries and put the whole matter in the court of public opinion. Lambast them in the media and encourage protesters to camp outside the National Assembly complex and they'll capitulate. At the same time abolish security votes so that you have some moral authority.

2. Merge and scrap the ministries until there are no more than 18. Have one minister-of-state per ministry to get round the constitution's one minister per state rule. Retrench all redundant civil servants. Also merge or scrap all redundant parastatals and retrench the redundant staff. The plan is to reduce the number of pen pushers in the federal civil service by 70% within 8 years. This will free up more than enough cash to pursue infrastructure projects.

3. Remove fuel subsidy. Spend the savings as well as those from reducing the government size on major infrastructure projects starting with a dual track, standard guage railway linking Lagos and Kano. Build some roads, bridges, schools and hospitals.

4. Sack the entire leadership of the Nigeria Police Force. All the senior officers, no exceptions. Promote young officers to replace them and sack them quickly if they don't perform. After purging the rot, go on a massive police recruitment drive with an emphasis on graduates, especially those with law degrees. Hire at least 1 million new policemen over 8 years. Also, sack the DPO of any area where policemen are seen collecting money from conductors and okadamen. Zero tolerance for corruption, hold the senior officers responsible for their subordinates actions. The same applies to ministers and department heads. Let everyone know that if they don't perform, they're going to get sacked. Not transfered, not retired, sacked!

To be a good leader you have to be ready to piss everyone off. You can't be doing "Mr. Niceguy" and waiting for consensus on every matter like GEJ is doing. You have to break eggs to make an omlette.

The PDP didn't do well during the 8 years they held power in the SW, they are doing a spectacularly bad job at the national level, and they are well known for corruption and vote rigging. With their record, I don't see how they are ever going to get the yorubas to vote for them again. And if they rig and win like they did in 2003, there will be mayhem in the streets.

I advise the PDP to focus on stealing what they can in Abuja and the states they control. If they get greedy and try and force their way back to the SW then they could unwittingly spark the popular revolution that will bring an end to this cycle of democracy.

chinedumo:
all other groups find Christianity as their common enemy

u wont see a satanist challenging a Muslim

cos they are common brothers

Utter bullshît.

The most common forms of satanism are basically offshoots of christianity since they more or less believe the same things except with a small twist. There is nothing to suggest that christians are being singled out by other religions. Any animosity towards christians likely stems from their inconsiderate noisemaking, their annoying proselytizing and their intolerance towards those who hold different beliefs, as OP has clearly demonstrated. In areas where Islam predominates, the non-mainstream religions oppose them.

If you really think christianity is the only religion that people oppose, then you've been drinking the kool-aid and you need to get out more.

Beaf:
Isn't it time we had a thorough discussion on the way forward?

The way forward is to invest the little money we have in areas that will grow the economy, instead of wasting it on government salaries, security vote and presidential food.

We need to spend the bulk of our budget on power plants, railways, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, sewage systems, mass transit, broadband networks. If the government can just do it's own little part, the Nigerian people will lift themselves out of poverty.

The poblem is that the people in power have no interest in doing the right thing. Take subsidy for instance. I understand that susidising fuel is not the most efficient use of our resources, but the governement has taken the N600billion budgeted for it last year and put it in next year's recurrent expenditure. Trust GEJ to find an even more useless way to waste our money.

otokx:
The permanent solution is to secure our borders especially between us and Niger and Chad by building a barbed wire fence in the interim then a wall; also the issue of a database of all Nigerian nationals should be looked into the nearest future which brings us to the issue of National ID.

I think a much better idea is to build a barbed wire fence around the three arms zone, then kill everybody inside. That'll solve all our problems.

1. Work shorter hours.
2. Make more money.
3. Lose 15kg and my newly acquired potbelly.
4. Start lifting weights again.
5. Be able to do 100 pushups easily by March at the latest.
6. Drink more alcohol.
7. Look for a long-term girlfriend (no more short put)

jarkbauer:
He stated that research had shown that the vibration caused while riding on okada could lead to impotence in men and that the helmet worn by several people was a source of spreading diseases and had serious health implication.

I hate it when public officials make rètarded statements like this. What studies have found a link between motorcycle riding and impotence? Other than one weak study that doesn't really apply to okadas, I'm not aware of any, and neither is google. Also what diseases are spread by helmets? Even headlice don't spread that way.

According to the chairman, “Economically, okada has become a lucrative business for its operators who have in turn become very reckless and impossible to control with flagrant disregard for law and order.”

Okada riding is not inherently criminal. If some people are using bikes to commit crimes or disregarding traffic rules, then it is the duty of the government to enforce the law and punish lawbreakers. You can't prevent everybody from using a useful and valuable service just because of a few criminals. Otherwise you ight as well ban table knives because some people use them to stab others.

Kazeem stated that because the majority of the commercial motorcycle operators were migrants from other states who have no accommodation or shelter before coming to Lagos State, they have constituted nuisance in several neighbourhoods.

The constitution explicitly bans the government from behaving like this. Every Nigerian has the right to live and work in any part of the country. Anybody who lives in Lagos is a lagosian and has full rights regardless of where they came from.

He explained that the engines of the commercial motorcycles are a source of noise and air pollution which is also contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer, stressing that there is a need to embark on quick action to reduce the pollution level.

Bûllshît. The hole in the ozone layer was caused by CFCs (chloroflourcarbons), a group of chemicals used as coolants in old refridgerators and air conditioners. There are no CFCs in okada engines. This guy clearly didn't go to a good secondary school.

afam4eva:
Like i said sometime ago, Igbos are being used for blood money in this dumb country. The sooner we act the better it is for generations to come.

I realize that emotions are running high, but let's not lose our perspective here. Boko Haram are not targeting only Ibos. The fact is that they are happy to kill members of every tribe, they even kill their fellow muslims. Let's not turn this into another ethnic issue. BH is everyone's problem regardless of tribe.

Also, the guy who suggested that we blow up a mosque should be ashamed of himself. How does that help the situation? How are you better than Boko Haram if you're advocating the same type of behaviour? FYI, the vast majority of muslims are just as horrified by this as you are.

The last thing we need in this country is another group of murderous rètards deliberately targeting civilians.

As bad as this story sounds, I'm reluctant to believe it without some proof. Are any other news sources reporting this? Did pointblanknews visit the site and take any pictures? Are there any plans to file a freedom of information request?

If they really used public money to do this, there's a good chance that we can embarrass Jonathan enough to stop all this first lady nonsense.

I've never cheated. The closest I came was turning a blind eye when the guy behind me was dubbing me during SSCE.

It's not a religious thing (I'm an atheist), it's just that I've always been able to read and pass by myself. Besides, how would I know that the person I'm copying has any idea what he's writing?

cashmentor:
And did the dinosaur really ever existed and if the world has stayed this long as i've now learnt, when then will it end?

Yes dinosaurs really existed. Don't be fooled by those people using the bible to claim that the earth is 6000 years old. The biblical/jewish creation story is a myth. It is no more factual than the yoruba story of Obatala creating the world with a bag of soil and a five-toed hen.

Also, it depends on what you mean by the world ending. The sun is going to become a red giant and incinerate all life on earth in about 4 to 5 billion years. And the last stars are due to run out of Hydrogen in a few trillion years. Don't worry sha, humanity would likely have gone extinct long before that.

Videos like this have been all over the internet for years. If you'd searched for "Nigeria" on youtube right after the original Boko Haram uprising in 2009, the first 6 or 7 results would have been videos of our policemen executing unarmed hausas in broad daylight with their faces clearly visible.

Typically, our useless government didn't see any need to caution or sack any senior policemen even when al Jazeera embarrassed us by showing some of these videos to the world. The only thing we've seen is the half-hearted prosecution of less than a dozen very junior policemen. And even that is unlikely to go anywhere judging from the vibes we've been getting from those involved.

Lady Winona:
I've seen so many similar cases to the op so I'm not shocked. @op, as a medical personnel who spent one of my postings seeing just hiv patients for more than 4 months, I can tell u that u are one of the healthiest hiv positive person I knw. Undetectable virus mean hiv copies of less than 50 and CD4 of 700 is more than one can hope for. Can u ve sex with your wife even without condoms to make babies? Yes and No. Just like we encourage hiv positive mothers to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months if they re unable to afford artficial feeds even though in the west, it is not ideal, u can if with undectable virus, high CD4, and on anti HIV drugs to just that with the least possible chance of infecting your wife since invitro fertilization or ICSI is quite expensive. Wishing u all the best. Cannot really offer any advice concerning the church. Not my forte. Just want to encourage u that u re on the right path and will live a fulfilling life no matter your situation. My regards to your fiance.

OP, please don't listen to this guy. Do not ever get tempted to sleep with your wife without a condom. The day you do so will likely be the will infect her. Don't assume that just because your viral load is low now that it will always be that way. Don't ever take Murphy's law for granted.

There's nothing wrong with you guys getting married as long as you take every precaution to keep your wife safe. But the moment you start recklessly exposing her to risk, you would have crossed a big line.

My advice to you is to go for semen washing + artificial insemination or IVF. If you can't afford either, then forget about having children. Whatever you do, don't risk your woman's health, not even if she's willing.

I've been reading through the constitution, particularly sections 143 and 144. It turns out that you can't recall a president. You can impeach and remove a corrupt one and you can get a sick one declared unfit, but the constitution doesn't make allowances for the removal of an incompetent president. You can only recall legislators apparently.

I guess we're stuck with Goodluck for the forseeable future.

HNosegbe:
But suppose we were able to do all of this (cumbersome process, as it appears). What is the next step? Do we have a viable opposition? How can we be sure that whoever emerges next won't be worse?

We don't really need to have a viable opposition. We don't even need a good person to replace Jonathan. All we need is to establish the principle that when the ruling class don't perform well and the people suffer, the people can punish them by kicking them out of office.

Then it won't matter who the president is.Whoever is there will know who his real bosses are and will have no choice but to work for the people who hold the votes. As opposed to serving vested interests in Abuja which is what Jonathan is doing right now.

This is what I was trying to explain to people when I was campaigning against PDP before the election. They haven't done well so we must kick them out one way or the other.

Kobojunkie:
If you have a plan . . . . put it forward, let's dissect it and then start somewhere. Honestly, I think the Nigerian people like what they have as is.

My plan is to attempt to recall Jonathan and Sambo. I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that to do so, you have to collect a certain number of signatures on a recall petition to force INEC to hold a referendum. If you can get >50% of the vote in that, then Jonathan ceases to be president. The senate president would become acting president and will have to organize a byelection within 90 days like someone mentioned above.

There's never been a better time to do this. Practically everybody is sick and tired of Jonathan and his party. If we succeed, we could have a new, non-PDP president by the middle of next year. If we fail, at least the politicians will have learnt that the ordinary Nigerians are to be feared and respected.

They will never try to pull a stunt like removing subsidy while spending billions on food and jumbo salaries again.

I'm going to talk to my lawyer friends tomorrow to find out what is needed.

Kobojunkie:
No matter which way, the solution to the Nigerian problem remains the Nigerian people.

We could start a recall drive from the grassroots. We can use facebook, twitter and BBM to mobilize people. We can put the petition form online for people to download, print and pass around for signatures.

It's very doable. And even if it fails, it will still put the fear of God in those greedy bästards.

Or maybe we could recall Jonathan and Sambo. I'm not sure how feasible that is, but it's an option.

Personally I don't think removing Jonathan will solve our problem because those who will replace him are likely to be the same or worse. I think the best strategy is one of obstructionism.

That means we block every thing Jonathan tries to do. We frustrate his every move. The NLC and TUC seem to be doing reasonably well in delaying his subsidy removal plans. If we can do the same thing with all his other harebrained ideas, maybe we can completely tie his hands so that he can't do too much damage before 2015.

The problem with this plan is that the likes of Boko Haram will get a free reign until then. But this is probably inevitable anyway because there's no constitutionally acceptable way to remove Jonathan, Sambo and Mark together. Whatever we do, we'll still be stuck with the spine of the same ineffective PDP government.