Hello everyone.

Just to share some of my experience.

I was a little reluctant to buy a one way ticket for my trip to school, but I eventually did after doing some research and looking through Nairaland as well.

The ticket officer at Emirates in Lagos also assured me that I could and indeed he sold thesame one way ticket to another student in my presence.

I bought the ticket on Emirates and it cost exactly half the price of a return ticket for most airlines for the date I wanted.

Immigration at Lagos didn't even ask about it and neither did they at Heathrow.

It might not always make sense depending on your travel plans, but if anyone is considering it just to add my own experience to the pool.

All the best to everyone planning, preparing and expecting. God will see you through.

Godspeed for all those travelling this week.

God's mercy, blessings and knowledge to all those who are now in the Uk.

Justwise, SpikeC, DonOms and Co well done and keep up the good work.

God will reward you guys.

Hello everyone.

I have been quietly following for a while now.

I submitted my application on the 21st of August at Ikeja and I received the approval email today.

I submitted the following

1. CAS
2. Statement of account. (I used 300 Naira as my conversion rate just to ensure)
3. Tranacript
4. Bsc certificate
5. TB test result
6. Personal sponsorship letter stating the total funds available in my account, my reason for studying the chosen course and plans for after graduation.

The TB test was a particularly funny experience because my mind played games with me while I was waiting for the result. I kept thinking about all the people with vicious coughs I had met in my lifetime and which of them could have been a carrier.

I arrived early at Ikeja and was actually allowed to go in an hour before my appointment.

For the interview, I was asked 8 questions.

1. Name, birthday and nationality
2. Title of course
3. Start date
4. Name of university
5. Reason for chosing university
6. Plans for after graduation
7. The effect of the course on plans after graduation
8. Reason for chosing the UK

It took about 6 minutes.

I was anxious about the outcome for 4 reasons
1. I had been refused a Canadian and US visa in the last one year
2. I had been refused a UK visa 9 years ago although I have since been issued the UK visa multiple times.
3. I am 29 and I have worked for my family company since graduation in 2009 in a different field.
4. I graduated with a third class and I chose a top up course in the UK.

At the end of the day, I got the email after 5 working days.

I am grateful to God. All the preparation and packaging and advice did not guarantee the visa, it was simply God.

This forum was immensely helpful. I read the last 100 pages while preparing and I got pointers on every page.

The day before I submitted, I saw the advise on the appendix 8 and I printed it out at the last minute.

I hope my sharing will help those who are planning and those waiting for responses.

Good work Justwise, SpikeC and Co.

You guys don't have no idea how many people you have helped.

I am really disappointed with the quality of responses to topics nowadays.

It seems as if people just jump at the chance to post a comment and don't even take 5 minutes
to think it through.

Nothing in Nigeria is perfect, absolutely nothing. Banks, schools, restaurants, shops, nothing.

But apart from the maybe 5% of business owners in Nigeria who are actually fraudsters, the majority
are honest people, who want to provide decent service in exchange for pay.

If you are a member of this forum and you own and run your own business, then you can understand what I am saying.

Please don't jump to condemn Jumia, or Konga, or DealDey or any e commerce business in Nigeria.

It is new, and it will take time to perfect.

Consider the hundreds of people who are employed by these companies, and the hundreds of businesses they deal with.

Also consider if maybe it was your relative who set up Jumia, or konga, would you be so quick to condemn an call them
fraudsters?

Consider if maybe, your wife, or husband, or girl or guy works for Jumia.

Consider that for the every 10 bad experiences, there are 100 good ones.

I am not saying dont complain if you dont get value for your money, but spare a thought
for the business people who took the risk to set up these companies.

One day, hopefully, you too will own a company, you too will have a few customers who are disappointed with your service
and you too will deal with owning and running a company in a difficult environment like ours.

Also, before you rush to post, take an extra five minutes to think about the impact of your words.

Yes its easy to say a lot of nonsense because we are anonymous, but trust me one day you will stand
on the other side.

How come no one has mentioned the CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido as a potential candidate?

As much as some people might not like this man, he has shown that you can be radical and still get things done in
Nigeria. Yes he has made a few mistakes, the 5,000 note problem, but with all of that
I would say unleashing a Sanusi on Nigeria's problems will be a step in the right direction.

Open for debate...

m.k.o2005:

Money things ! Good write up though ! But if i may ask,who do you give money to in church and for what purpose do you give ?
In my opinion,trying to ask for accountability in church will make the church look like one village meeting or social club !
Just give ur offerings,tithes,pledges all you do for God and in the long run,yourself. Youe God knows ur heart and ur actions. Allow those pastors who steal church fund(God'fund)to go ahead the owner of the money will handly them if neccessary. But if you can't go by this,stop giving or going to church all together if it will do you good !
God bless us

It will be interesting to know how the churches that the apostle paul set up handled this issue.

I am talking about the churches as described in Ephesians, Colossians, Thessalonians etc.

But I quite agree with you, we give to God and not to man, God sees our hearts and will reward all
men according to their deeds.

Image123:
do the towns make up Nigeria, or villages and creeks. People are generally not faithful tithers. Offerings, vows and projects are a different issue. You are including 36states remember? i can say it again that even RCC, RCCG AND DEEPERLIFE will struggle to boast of a single church with over 100 working class members who are consistent TITHERS in all 36 states, not to mention the generalisation of all churches and pastors.

Eventually some disgruntled church worker will leak information to the press as it usually happens.

After the private jet debacle, many more people are interested in this topic.

Churches should preempt this and put the information out.

They are not compelled to, but morally I think it would be the way to go.

In as much as the members of the congregation give the tithes and offering freely, then indeed no crime has been committed. The church does not operate
like a public company or a listed company where the shareholders can decide to protest if management seems to be embezzling money.

Rather than worry about the pastors or overseers enriching themselves from the churches pot,
let Christians begin to advocate at their churches that the accounts should be made public.

Every church should render quarterly financial statements which can be independently audited.
If indeed there is nothing to hide, and the churches are doing God's work, then put all that information in the public domain.

Let the congregation and the supposed unconverted masses judge for themselves how these churches are run and then decide to if, when and
where to pay tithes and offering.

After all, its not very difficult to judge how a church spends money, look at the church building, landed property, equipment, automobiles etc
and do a simple valuation, like the initial poster did.

But my view is simply Christians should champion the cause of openness and transparency and compel their churches to put everything out in the open.

A lot of the people on this forum are Christians, many are workers in church and many are pastors etc with a nairaland alter ego.

So lets get the real information.

CHIMSKY: What is wrong is wrong.It is very bad English.
The real question should be:I hope/trust you rested well?
It is simply Nigerian English coined by people who do not know any better and can not be bothered to ask.
Each time you go along with the crowd and use it,you are simply validating this wrong usage of the language.Because so many adults say it,our children now believe it is ok.
I am shocked at the number of supposedly well educated and sophisticated people who now say this.Follow ,follow mentality na im go kill us!

Well said my friend...

tintingz: why should i be asking mechanic, stylist or a guard. . .i can only ask if i know they are not in good health. . .

So therefore, even though there is no general consensus about the correctness or appropriateness of the questions
we can agree that the context is key.

tintingz: you wont stop there "se e sun daada?"
Something not well might happen that night. . .maybe having cold or headache

Se e sun daada... exactly.. that is "did you sleep well"

But surely you can ask your dad, mom, brother, sister, cousin who lives in the same house with you
Se e sun daada.

But would you ask your mechanic or stylist or the security guard at your office?

context and culture.

TimePiece:

though your colleague over-reacted; she must have been angered by someone or something else
but the appropriateness of the expression given the context (domain, culture, closeness of the parties involved, etc) just might be questioned.
this, owing to the fact that the meaning is ambiguous and therefore, could be misinterpreted; hence a reaction.

i understand that for the Germans, you don't ask the question, "how was your night?" because it immediately raises a feeling of fear, suspicion, and uncertainty for what could possibly have happened (the night before) without their being consciously aware of it, which could have been caused by many factors.
for them, it is more tolerable to say, "Hast du gut geschlafen?" - to mean, "did u rest/sleep well?".
be that as it may, i still think your colleague simply blew it out of proportion.

just to make an addition, i personally feel that Nigerians use language recklessly. many times, people say things they absolutely do not understand or know its implications. what one can do is to try to understand by making excuses for them.

I agree with this... context, domain, culture.

But then again, with language, something that is ordinarily wrong, but is widely used will eventually become "right" to people.

If I may digress a bit, I recall learning french in primary school and "Bon apres midi" was considered a greeting then.

When I tried using it at Uni many years later, I was told that is was wrong

dmcdad:

Slangs and Jargons are part of the english language. Do u know that? Buh they are not accepted in formal settings. That could apply here too. U can say it shouldn't be used in formal settings buh that doesn't make it entirely wrong. Don't you agree?

Indeed it is not entirely wrong since the English language is a mix of different languages and slangs but it is more appropriate between
people who are not ordinary colleagues.

I personally don't use it because think its a bit wrong.

But if asked, a simple "fine thanks" works. no need to give any details.

One thing to try is to translate it to your own language and see how it sounds.

Yoruba would be "Bawo ni ale yin" doesnt sound right....

The question is awkward and sometimes it is simply inappropriate between ordinary acquaintances
and office colleagues.

I have searched English greetings on the internet and asked Professors and
the answer is the same, such a greeting does not exist.

Its better to simply ask "how are you" or "how do you do".

If one must ask such a question, then its between family members or close relatives or people who live in the same house,
Ideally then you can answer how your night was. ( if it was bad, you can explain why)

If of you ask any other person, it cannot be answered properly.

I believe its one of those Nigerian terms that although generally used,
are grammatically wrong.

e.g mr. X is "not on seat"
or "I met his absence"

Both the person who started this thread, and the ones arguing for or against are wrong.

If the trains are owned by the FG or by the Osun State government, or even by the devil himself, the bottom line is

it is the job of a governor to facilitate the development of his state and people by any legal means necessary.

All that is required is that we mention what he did and how he was able to achieve it. No praise!

He is just doing his Job. 

Unfortunately, we have been thoroughly starved of good governance such that minor things like this excite us!

Errors irritate. The best you can do is not take it personal, understand that no one is perfect, and try to politely correct.
Otherwise just try to understand what is being said and move on.
Some people had there first introduction to the language listening to Eminem,

Unfortunately DSTV is all we've got for now. The others are simply not good enough. Also,
who really has time to watch 4 hours of T.V? Even footie, except on weekends i usually fall asleep
if its a weekday.
I've resorted to downloading TV programmes now. Forget dstv.
I use five, BBC i player et al to get TV on demand ( proxy of course).
Download all other stuff while at work, watch on my lappy when i have time.
Apart from that, no point paying 10,300, as a bachelor.
when i have kids maybe?

Coming against arguably the best team in the world, Arsenal are likely to struggle.
Although a whitewash like last year is unlikely, Barcelona are favorites.
My advice for the Gunners, give it all you've got, attack, defend, tackle, whatever.
Whatever he outcome over both legs, walk away with your head held high,

and come August, sell Mr Fabregas for a good fee, pocket it and buy another starlet!