₦airaland Forum

You can just see the stupid people one shares a country with writing nonsense on this thread.

Elsewhere in the world, when a large city with substantial economic activity has an influx of people from the rest of the country and beyond, the city government sees that population as a asset to be leveraged. They invest in infrastructure to make sure that even if many people cannot live in the CBD, they can commute regularly in a way that is fast and cheap. They also invest in low cost and subsidised housing in and around the CBD because they know that the people that keep the CBD running are the traffic wardens, cleaners, street sweepers, facility managers, nannies and other low-income people. Without these people, there is no business district and there is no business! Is it everybody that will be an Accountant or a Software Engineer?

That's why just across the river from the City of London, which is the most expensive patch of business land on earth, there is Lewisham, which is a low-income neighbourhood, and the local council deliberately keeps housing in Lewisham subsidised relative to its location so that poor people can still afford to live there and provide the City of London with cheap, low-skill labour.

That is an actual government!

Not this sorry gang of pathetic losers who cannot construct a single rail line between Marina and Okoko after more than 10 years and $1.5bn, and who cannot figure out how to solve a simple problem like creating low income housing specifically for cheap labour that the Island/Lekki axis needs to keep functioning. I think by the time you are done pushing all the poor people out of Lagos, your car will drive itself, or your kids will watch themselves, or your offices will clean themselves, and your buildings will secure themselves. Foolish, visionless people.

People that cannot argue an intellectual line to defend why after nearly 2 decades of their government, there is no large scale fast commuter link between Island and Mainland, and there is no subsidised housing to absorb the resultant social dislocation. Their response to the posers raised is "There are too many people in Lagos. They should leave Lagos and go home! We have no idea how to organise a population to be a wealth-generating asset, so instead we will just complain that Lagos is full! Wah wah!"

This is the grinding face of government incompetence in Lagos.

If your solution to social dislocation caused by gentrification is not to provide a feasible transport or accommodation alternative for displaced people, then you have no business in government.

You should go home to your village and raise cows. Government work requires too much thinking for you.

^^
Again, feel free to keep on burying your head in the sand by saying that "people should go back to their villages". As if this worthless platitude will ever change anything. And FYI, most of the people in question are Ogu and Ilaje people who are native to that area - Lagos IS their "village". They are more indigenous than you. If anything, they should be telling YOU to go back to wherever you come from and "hold your representative responsible".

Don't think any of these useless pseudo-ethnicist sentiments will buy you time or solve the problem. The time bomb is still ticking whether or not you want to pretend that your little middle class bourgeoisie lifestyle makes you better than other people. You may not be poor, but make no mistake, you're not rich either. You're just a few unfortunate events from being just like the people you are trying to erase. When the situation reaches boiling point, the rich people you are pretending to be a part of will leave Ikoyi with their private helicopters and leave you to your bloody fate at the hands of frustrated people. Don't think your existence is anything other than temporary and unsustainable.

As long as Nigeria is still one entity, people from all over the country WILL continue to move to Lagos to search for a better life. As long as the Lagos State Government is happy to make use of that population as a tool to harvest more IGR than the rest of Nigeria put together, it must also be willing to provide basic government services for that population. The largest state budget in Nigeria comes with responsibilities. If Ambode and his government are not willing to accept that responsibility and do their job, then they should resign and play golf. Government is serious work, not a place you go to pay journalists and bloggers to praise you for enriching your associates with land deals and doing absolutely nothing.

And by the way, I'm from Lagos so miss me with the emotional micro-ethnic nonsense. I can see through it from 7 miles away.

^^
This is a trite, tired, played out, stupid and ridiculous canard.

If the elites fronted by LASG want to "help" poor people have better living conditions than the shanties, then they should construct low cost housing like every other sensible country does! It's only in Nigeria that basic accommodation is treated like a privilege and not a basic human right.

The only housing constructed by any public or private developers is always targeted at upper middle class people, with prices starting from N4 million - which cleaner or driver living in a shanty can afford that? Why isn't your government starting from that basic issue before going around displacing people to create waterfront property to put in their glossy YouTube videos about the fake prosperity of Lagos? Why is the government not doing basic things like constructing drainage for Lekki Phase 1 which floods everytime a little rain falls, but supposedly it is chasing some grand megacity vision which can only be achieved by making thousands of struggling people homeless?

Have people committed some kind of crime by not being rich? Will there not always be need for drivers, cooks, cleaners, nannies and security guards? How much do these people get paid? Where in Lekki can they find affordable accommodation that will enable them to keep their jobs and maintain an honest living? Why are you avoiding this elephant in the room by talking about how shanties are bad? Who wants to stay in a shanty? Is it a thing of choice? Will everybody be a subsistence farmer in their village because you and your government don't want to fix the glaring problem of lack of reasonably priced modern accommodation in Lagos?

Go and tell the people you work for that they cannot stop poor people from all over Nigeria coming into Lagos to look for a better life, so instead of trying to bully them away by destroying their illegal settlements, you should instead construct low cost housing, fix the transport infrastructure problem and generally just do your fecking job as a government instead of looking for useless shortcuts.

It's not a crime to be poor. Poverty is not a moral failure. It is a result of circumstances. The government has a responsibility to everybody it collects taxes from, including poor drivers and cleaners living in shanty houses in Lekki Phase 1. Tell your government that its primary responsibility is not to rich property developers and ocean sandfillers. Tell them that the agency cooks and house maids working in Lekki Phase 1 are also paying income tax to the government that is not doing its job.

Tell Ambode to stop reading what he has paid journalists and social media loudmouths to write about his government. Tell him to start doing his goddamn job and stop chasing poor people.

There is a war on poor people in Lagos. Not a war on poverty, but a war on people who happen to be in poverty. Last week Otodo Gbame was in the news after being demolished to make way for a private waterfront development. What wasn't in the news was that this was just one of several forced evictions and demolitions that took place in the Island-Lekki axis.

The Lagos upper class are chasing a vision of creating a rich people's waterfront paradise out of Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Lekki. Anyone who is too inconveniently poor to fit into this vision is being remorselessly and brutally evicted using all kinds of tactics including arson and deadly force. Nobody is thinking about where all these poor people are supposed to go, or how the resultant Nigerian Dubai will source for its cleaners, cooks, security guards, office assistants, drivers, maids and nannies.

Is it possible or feasible that everyone in an entire quarter of a city will be rich property owners or upwardly mobile service professionals? Doesn't a capitalist society require a certain number of less privileged people? Why is Island-Lekki Lagos trying to drive out or exterminate everyone who is not at least upper middle class?

The cleaner at the office didn't show up to work yesterday so I asked what happened. Turns out she has been evicted from the shanties behind Lekki Phase 1 for the 3rd time in just one week. First her own structure was demolished, then she moved in to squat at her brother's place, which was also demolished the next day. She then moved to her friend's place and it too was demolished 2 days later.

Now she has relocated to another shanty community further up the road in Ajah. Who knows when the government will come and demolish that too and leave her stranded and without hope. She might eventually have to leave her job because commuting from Ajah to Lekki on her salary everyday is not realistic. When that happens, and we have one more frustrated young unskilled person on the streets, what is going to happen?

I was driving through Gerrard Road this morning on the way to Parkview Estate, and what I saw made me feel scared. Gerrard Road is probably the most expensive neighbourhood on this side of the earth, filled with old money, expatriates, oil workers, and high rise waterfront developments that have names like "The Address". You do not see poverty here - even the air feels different.

Nobody has to tell you, it's unspoken but obvious that this area is only for rich or pretentious people. If you are poor, you are neither seen nor heard. But this morning, I saw a woman lying fast asleep with her bag of belongings on the perfectly manicured lawn in front of one of the buildings with $86,000/year penthouses. It's as if she was saying "You've thrown me out of my home rich man, now I've come to yours. Do your worst."

I have lived through the time of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, and in all these 27 years, this is the first time I am seeing the poor openly revolt in Lagos. The poverty of the Island-Lekki shanties which has always remained respectfully out of sight in places like Ikoyi is now popping up boldly and conspicuously.

The first thing that happens before a bloody class revolution is when the poor stop bowing to the rich, and start raising their middle fingers instead. When the poor stop doing as they are told and start showing open class defiance on Victoria Island and Ikoyi, you know that a French-style revolution is coming, and it WILL be nasty. They will not differentiate between who is actually "rich" and who is working hard or faking it. You will all be "rich".

But I know nobody is listening, and that is why I did not take a picture of the lady on Gerrard Road. If I did, they would simply send some uniformed thugs to make her conspicuous poverty disappear violently from Ikoyi - no matter that this would only hasten the sequence of events leading up to a bloody class war. The Nigerian rich do not think long or even medium term.

cc lalasticlala Seun Obinoscopy

YOUNGSTUNNA:
no need for argument bro...
Computer can't never be smarter than me... don't know about you.

Typical religious person. Hideously ignorant and proud of it.

YOUNGSTUNNA:
my brother robot can't never be smarter than human... just like you can't be smarter than your maker

This comment betrays a deep lack of knowledge about computers and human anatomy.

The human brain is basically a really advanced supercomputer with billions of nodal connections making up its neural network. AI with silicon nodes have already achieved hundreds of millions of nodal connections, with the added advantage of being able to process far quicker than any human can. The only limiting factor on how intelligent AI can become is how many nodes can be crammed into one neural network. Where silicon conductors reach their physical limits, quantum physics is already solving the problem of how to exponentially increase processing power.
https://phys.org/news/2016-10-quantum-effects-artificial-intelligence.html

In our lifetimes, we WILL see AI with greater processing capacity than humans. You'd better stop using 'God' to hide from reality and console yourself. The people who are creating AI that will overtake us are also children of 'God', they don't have 2 heads. Focus on scientific reality and stop bringing 'God' into it.

YOUNGSTUNNA:
My brother robot can't never and will never replace the place of a human.

just as much as human can't never replace the place of God.

Robot don't make themselves... I got your point, and I know it will affect the rate of employments....
My point is, be a good programmer and robot will never replace you

You said what?
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33868728

I repeat, except you are Larry Page or Steve Balmer, your job in IT is at risk, just like a factory worker in Indonesia. Whether you are aware of it or not. The only people in IT who will never lose are the entrepreneurs, not programmers and coders.

heybee72:
Thank God I'm a programmer

Yeah, you're not safe either. Not by a long shot. Google is already trialling its self coding algorithm that can write software and direct AI much faster than any human can. IT and software development jobs are nowhere near as safe as you think they are. The whole world is heading for a big employment crisis.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2813303/Google-reveals-developing-computer-smart-program-ITSELF.html

http://www.primaryobjects.com/2015/01/05/self-programming-artificial-intelligence-learns-to-use-functions/

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603381/ai-software-learns-to-make-ai-software/

@ SIREWAP and YOUNGSTUNNA, Google is already trialling its self coding algorithm that can write software and direct AI much faster than any human can. IT and software development jobs are nowhere near as safe as you think they are. The whole world is heading for a big employment crisis.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2813303/Google-reveals-developing-computer-smart-program-ITSELF.html

http://www.primaryobjects.com/2015/01/05/self-programming-artificial-intelligence-learns-to-use-functions/

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603381/ai-software-learns-to-make-ai-software/

opethom:
His album (GOLD) still remain one of the best ...
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That was a sweet album. Loved it.

So we're supposed to clap for you or what?

You used a windfall to partially offset a backlog of salaries and pensions that your theft and lack of vision caused, and now the Osun State Ministry of Information "Strategic Communication Unit" wants us to applaud?

That what? "Aregbesola is working"? Or what exactly?

sauerr:
But, maybe, you need your client to understand that an academic paper is different from your regular top-10-whatever content that parades the blogosphere. If you client wants a good-researched paper, well written and sufficiently tidied, then he/she has to pay more. Except of course your client is willing to settle for a poor job from a charlatan.

Well, people get what they pay for. As I said, if not that I want to preserve a relationship, nothing would make me accept such a job and at such notice. It's just some of the crap copywriters have to go through in this country. And you should also remember that the client holds ALL the power. If he/she doesn't like your common sense suggestion, that's the end of that engagement.

The balance of power is with the customer as always...

veinless:
1.50 / word. ...

academic paper ..1.50/ word

That was my reaction when my client sent the job. But I need to preserve the relationship, and who knows, that derisory N3000 may be very useful to the person who is doing it. I'm not making a kobo off this job.

OgidiOlu3:
If my Math serves me correctly, that'd be N3000, right? This guy is high.

That means the client is high, and not me because that's exactly how much I am being offered. I only accepted the job to preserve a business relationship that usually pays a lot more and this is my first time ever outsourcing a job. I'm not making a dime off this job. In the world of copywriting and content writing, you sometimes have to lick a lot of toad and take a lot of rubbish. Do we like it? No, but that's life. We won't be here forever and in 4 years time all this whining and moaning will not seem like viable excuses if we have not achieved certain things.

That's how life works.

ADAMUdaCOWBOY:
Write it yourself.You want someone to write the paper you will claim tomorrow as yours. GEJPosterity is that how your hero got his PhD? By getting people to write his papers for him?

The terrible thing about living the life of a rural cow herder is that it shrinks your brain to the size of a pea. Ideas and possibilities are far beyond your scope of comprehension, and the Dunning-Kruger effect sets in, where you are not only dumb, but too dumb to realise that you are dumb and other people are smarter than you.

FYI, I completed university almost a decade ago and I run a copywriting agency, which is why I put up this ad. If you had been given the opportunity to get a useful education instead of chasing malnourished cows through the Sahel region in your childhood, you might have been able to handle the work I am outsourcing, but since such possibilities are now forever lost to you, the only thing you can do is show yourself up in public as a dumb fura-de-nunu-quaffing slowpoke who doesn't know the difference between handling a business engagement and writing for personal purposes.

I'd sympathise with you, but unfortunately that would just be lost on you as well. You think on the same level as the cows who raised you.

Should be about 2,000 words or so. Rate offered in N1.50/word. Need it completed by 8pm Sunday latest.

Send an email to jesuisnaga@gmail.com if your're up for it.

Stop all this "I'm still a small boy" rubbish and man up. Stop acting like a little b1tch. If he does not have any legal basis to show up at your house threatening you, then look him in the eye the next time he comes and tell him straight out that you know your rights and you know that what he is doing is illegal. Tell him that you have spoken to a lawyer, and the next time he tries such action again, he will be arrested for trespassing and criminal harassment. Even if he doesn't believe that you have the power to do anything to him, at least he will know that you are not a complete simpleton and he will decide that it is not worth the trouble to offend someone who is smarter than he thought at first.

But all this chicken behaviour is the reason why Nigerian "ogas" get away with all the nonsense they get away with, and then when people like me refuse to be bullied, we get a reputation as the one with a "chip on their shoulder".

Stop acting like a b1tch and stand up for yourself already, sheesh!

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Give me a shout.

Seun:
Very funny. Too bad it's an ad.

Lol that's the entire point isn't it?

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[quote author=Adexy4us post=54889526][/quote]TBH, I wouldn't know what to tell you about the interview. The only thing I can tell you is that this is probably the best teaching opportunity in the whole of Nigeria. I went to Grange School, so I know a fair bit about the place. Do not Bleep up. Bring your A-game because I can tell you that EVERYTHING about you will be watched, from your dressing to your speech to your confidence and your personality. It is a very pretentious environment filled with a mixture of rich people and wannabes, so put on your game-face and expect them to throw curve ball questions at you.

If you can make a success of this interview, you can get to just about anywhere. I know at least 2 of my former teachers at Grange who were recruited by schools in the UK and their lives are at another level now. Never let down your guard, never let them make you feel too comfortable (it's a trap!) and always stay respectful and professional. Don't let your eyes wander, and don't show signs of being fidgety or uncomfortable.

Good luck!

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If you have ambition in life, you won't even be applying for any silly Nigerian civil service crap shoot.

Learn a freelancing skill (article writing, graphic design, web development etc) so you can gather some small change, then get yourself a passport and fly your young and useful ass out to somewhere you have a chance of becoming something in life. Because in Nigeria, you are guaranteed to be a nobody. You will be poor, frustrated and mistreated until you are old and useless and you will die anonymous and frustrated.

Leave this useless country while you still can! Even a dustbin man in Cyprus has a far higher standard of living than most "rich" people in Nigeria. When you leave Nigeria and discover that roadside gutters are meant to be covered, and they are covered pretty much everywhere else, then you will realise that even the people you look up to in Ikoyi and Lekki and Maitama and Asokoro are living like a bunch of fukin 18th century slum dwellers.

You will have no idea just how useless this thing called Nigeria is until you leave. When you leave Nigeria and discover that even Angola and Uganda have constant electricity and far better transport infrastructure than whatever you have seen since you were born in this shithole...when you realise that 3rd and 4th tier Chinese cities you have never heard of like Nanjing have monorails, subways and well-planned architecture while Lagos and Abuja don't even have painted lines on their potholed roads...when you realise that people born in poor countries like Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam are still 3 or 4 times better off than you, and that the poor people working in sweatshops in Vietnam make a lot more money than you with your BSc and MSc that you had to bribe or sleep with lecturers to get...when you realise that the entire economy of Nigeria can be destroyed by just bringing down 3rd mainland bridge, and yet the pillars supporting it at Yaba are already shedding concrete and about to fail...and the government knows, but they're waiting for a disaster so they can award themselves the repair contract...

When you realise just how viciously, monstrously, deliberately USELESS this thing called Nigeria is, you will carry your last N30k and get yourself a passport.

Humans beings are not supposed to live like this.

AngelicBeing:
@ The bold , may your prayers be answered, Let me share this with you for the sake of this discussion, l dont normally like talking about myself, with all humility , My friend l was super-patriotic to the cause of Nigeria as a nation before, l even lambast my family members and friends whenever they speak ill of Nigeria as a nation but they keep telling me that my eyes will soon clear, and indeed l saw it first hand when l first traveled out of Nigeria for a conference in Amsterdam- The Netherlands years ago and subsequently l have been to several other Western Nations before l finally settled down and call it eternal good-bye to Nigeria as a nation , when l returned back to Nigeria after the conference my mindset changed completely.

if you ask me, it is better to be a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th hand citizen anywhere in the West / a saner clime where you have equal opportunity to be anything you want to be, my first job in the West l was earning more than white Europeans who have been on the job for years because my organisation told me plainly that l brought a lot to the table than the white Caucasians, moral of my story is that Nigeria kills your potentials gradually, sadly the useless politicians we hail online send their wards / kids to the West to get the best and also get citizenship, Buhari just came back from England because our health care system in Nigeria is almost comatose, Nigeria rewards mediocrity, if you dont have connection even with your PHD in Nigeria it makes no difference and that was my anger when l read this thread before that girl came talking trash

You won't see truer words than this on Nairaland.

Leave this country if you have any ambition! December will not meet me in this country.

sugarbuns:
I need someone like you in my life. Please can I send you my email too. Thanks

Sure thing.

If I mention the helicopter company based in Ikoyi that did cadet pilot recruitment in 2014 and selected 12 people from 6,000 to go for the training in Florida after 4 gruelling stages, only to end up taking 4 of the 12, and all 4 of them were from Anambra, same as the company's head of HR. And that one of the 4 they took even ended up flunking out midway through the course because she wasn't good enough...

Marotzke:
leisure time you say? Sarrki spends all his working time in Naira land.
He is paid for it anyway. N250,000 a month. plus brand new laptop, by the Buhari media centre.
Modath is paid slightly higher.
The resident Bureau chief for Nairaland is Omenka.
Hunger nearly finished him off when Gbawe made away with the entire budget of stipends for Nairaland APC e warriors.
Whe Oga Lai finnally approved the back log of payments plus the enhanced incentives, the Benue man changed his name to Omenka lives.
Trully he nearlly died, in order to live large now.
Berem? After collecting her outstanding payments , this Imo state born lady, married to an Ekitiman abi na Ondoman (ndiofe), quickly hightailed it to her husbands house.
Heard she opened a provisions store and a Buka by the side.
Aigbofa, Mayor of Ikorodu, etc were all retrenched by Ambode.
Aigbofa went back to london ,while Mayor is now bus condutor for one BRT Bus.

LOOOL no wonder those handles like EkoIle and EkoAtlantic have just gone silent since 2015.

Lol. People wasting their lives licking politicians' asses