Can I have your contact please. Is this bakery still available?

My People , it seems you don't understand the message here.

The one making the threat, is the same as the one purportedly being threatened. Do we understand?

Bombs are about to go off all over Gbaramatu, and a disclaimer + diversion are being issued. I believe the authorities are prepared.

It is well understood.

Dear Visa officer,
I and my wife were issued a b1/b2 visa 2 years ago to attend a conference in the USA. We did, and a year later we travelled again for another business visit. During the visit, my wife who was 6 months pregnant went into premature labour and was rushed to emergency in a hospital where she was delivered.
As a result, the baby was in critical state and kept in intensive care for 3 months with 2 extra months of follow up by the doctors, before they returned, within the validity of the visa.
In the process, the medical bills mounted so high and the hospital turned it over to debt collectors. We arranged a monthly payment with the collectors though and will take 18 months to clear.
In this situation, can we apply for visa by dropbox considering that we still have medical bills uncleared? And in particular, because the baby has appointment with her doctors. Will our indebtedness affect our chances of getting a visa now? Or do we wait to clear the bills? I need your advice as I don't want to spoil my opportunity to visit the USA whenever we need to. Thanks very much.

PassingShot:
It's unfortunate that we just have to look back given the present situation of our economy. The situation has been brought about by GEJ's failure to save during windfall from oil sale of average of $100 a barrel. He instead reduced foreign account fromm $44bn in 2011 to $29bn in 2015. The question is, what did he do with the $15bn difference and the excess dollars earned in that period?

Can any supporter of GEJ sincerely answer that what he 'achieved' commensurates with what we earned?

The hardship of today is a result of poor decisions of years past.

I don't envy PMB and his team at all. They inherited a hemorrhaging economy at a time oil price is crashing on daily basis.

Honestly, you have raised some important points. In particular, the issue of the foreign reserves drop in GEJ's tenure. But let's take a dispassionate look at the points and the circumstances again.

1. The claim by Apc and their cohorts, that the economic collapse should be blamed on the Jonathan government is irresponsible. Why did the economy stay fine throughout his 6 years in office? How come that government successfully managed the economy for their 6 years in power to the extent Nigeria was the toast of investors globally? Nigeria was an economic phenomenon during the last government, for instance:

- Our stock market was consistently rated top 3 performing in the world.

- We grew to become Africa's biggest economy, overtaking South Africa , no mean feat.

- We never had petrol queues as products came in constantly and consistently, and at official price. We even had a reduction in price by 10 naira to reflect the crash in global crude prices. (In Apc government, we have a massive crash in global crude prices, yet they reduced the price by 50 kobo!!! Fraud!!!)

- The issue of Jonathan saving excess monies: Do we all remember how Dr Okonjo Iweala kept crying and screaming about the need to save in a Sovereign wealth fund? Do we remember how the governors forum led by Amaechi stood against the idea and even went to court about it? Now the chickens have come home to roost!!!!

- There's neither magic nor shortcuts in managing an emerging complex economy like Nigeria's. Same way there's neither magic nor shortcuts to carrying out a major brain or heart surgery. Surgeries are performed by highly trained, skilled and experienced surgeons. Not even by 'normal Doctors (GPs). And this answers the questions about how and why the economy was buoyant under PDP and suddenly begins to crash under Apc! It's knowledge, Simple!!!

- Do you know what the IMF president, Christine Lagsrde, told Buhari when she visited last week? Answer: She told them there will be no loans available for Nigeria now, (as buhari was planning to take massive loans to finance his budget), as Nigeria has been delisted from critical indexes which would have allowed institutional investors reflate the economy via bonds in this critical times. When the delisting was about happening in june, buhari and Apc dismissed it as nonsense talk. They never knew how Nigeria is so interconnected to the global economy. They never knew they closed critical access to important financing windows. Okonjo Iweala would never make such mistakes. Competence is key!

- The major item that strains our foreign reserves is Fuel imports and subsidies. Jonathan, in all sincerity, called for the removal of subsidies and the nation crucified him. That would have solved this problem once and for all. Now the same treacherous Apc comes around and now removes subsidies which they earlier condemned.

I recommend this government does 2 things to salvage what will be the worst outing of the country since colonial days:

1. Look for an world class expert in development economics with critical experience in emerging markets to manage the economy, with sufficient powers given to him/her.

2. Get Buhari to liberalise his mindset and let go of his Statist and socialist ideologies. It isnt going to be compatible with number 1 above.

GenBuhari:
I will advise against accepting anything from America, probably fitted with satellite tracking device, and other spying technology, that they would use to defeat our military.

US are behind Boko haram , why making donations now that we have practically defeated Boko haram?

Why didn't they make such donation when GEJ need help and Boko running wild?

Have we defeated Boko haram? I am confused here. Or abi no be the same Nigeria I dey ?

tensazangetsu:
That airport is a disgrace. What of the fact that you have to dish our 500 naira to use a trolley. Something that is free everywhere else in the world. This country should be sold to China and the money shared for everyone. Useless country.

That's not true! In many airports in the USA, including JFK, New York, you pay up to $6 to use a trolley.

And it is not N500 paid for trolleys at MMIA Lagos.

Make we dey talk true.

Elijahrona2:
Warri the city in which I was born and I've lived all my life (I've only visited Benin for just a week and port Harcourt for about 2 months), was once a city that was ever booming. With private companies here and there, with Chevron, shell, a working steel company (DSC) and a port. As I was growing up, people wouldn't suffer much and the stealing was just in the middle section of main Warri (iyara, sido, essi layout, avenue etc). Now come to Warri, it's almost as dru as a dessert. The port (npa Warri port) was closed, the steel company (DSC) was closed, even Shell moved out. The reason: influence from external sources(perhaps haters of the city). Please o stealing is now a trending in Warri. Before if you're a thief and you're caught, you'll be burned alive but now thanks to the population of thief's, no more burning. In fact if someone's house is rubbed, you'll hear people saying Warri day hungry. This city that was filled with vibes (an average waferian is a comedian) is now arguably dead. Most youths are now running to other states while more and more companies are been closed. Even the famous effurun garden park has been shut down while a new shoprite (Delta mall) was built opposite is (lacking customers). The only people who go to the mall is to buy something worth about 500 naira and snap all postures of pics inside the mall. Let's not laugh about this. Please if you can, help this city.

Basicnaijaneeds..com.ng

Bros, that statement on shoprite na lie!.

Warri Shoprite has consistently been packed full with high value shopping.

teadrake:

I understand where you're driving at.But what could 9 million naira do to a man like Tinubu? 9million is a peanut to Tinubu mister,Even Dokpesi received whooping sum of 2billion via an intermediary

My brother, is it the quantum of money looted that matters, or the fact that the money, whatever sum, was misappropriated?

Are you now inferring that misappropriation of N9million should be considered a 'no crime', just because some 'took' N2.5billion?

Or is it because it is Tinubu, and he is above the law?

Shaftrod:
Aigoo? Can someone educate this guy that a registered company is a legal entity and quite different from the owner?The cheque was not issued in favour of Tinubu's name but that of the company's account as money for compensation when Jonathan was clamping down on the press using the soldiers.

Why do we keep deceiving ourselves? Where do you see corrupt people using their own names to receive corrupt proceeds?
They all use company fronts and this is the same pattern with all those involved in the dasukigate.

Dokpesi received his own share through AIT.

Obaigbena received his through Thisday newspapers.

Tinubu also received his share through The Nation papers. Which is owned by Vintage press ltd, a Tinubu company.

However, it is ONLY because Tinubu is APC, that he has the liberty to return and explain it away. In a real anti-corruption war, Tinubu should be in JAIL.

cramjones:


GEJ remains the cause of our problems...His sins will linger for at least 8 years before we can summount them completely

-CramJones

Confirmed! This is @Cramjones way of telling us that the Buhari Government will not make any changes even in 8 years. It seems a good strategy to start to blame Buhari's ALREADY FORSEEN massive failure on Jonathan and pdp.

@op,
What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.

The same dish the APC served Goodluck Jonathan is being served President Buhari.

I marvel at so many things: I have wondered how we expect water to rise above it's level. Buhari CANNOT give what he doesn't have. We are in for a rough ride economically and socially.

All the efforts of the PDP government over the past 16 years are spectacularly being reversed. I remember how Soludo and the likes laboured to link Nigeria to the global economy. How gradually, we began to see our banks grow tremendously, and how e-banking began to take center stage. How our atm cards began to be accepted internationally and across various online platforms thus opening up Nigerians to a vast world of e-commerce. Then even PayPal accepted Nigerian cards.

Fastforward to Jan 1st, 2016 and my local atm can't even work abroad again. My online ads and other services are being blocked because of a strange retrogressive policy. Etc.

I remember how then Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala cried over the need to set aside our oil earnings in a sovereign fund to invest and hedge against oil price crash. The governors led by then Rotimi Amaechi fought her proposal. Here we are today.

Need I say more? Nuff said.

Happy new year all.

Hmmmm. I feel quite disappointed by my fellow Yorubas. I hardly sign in here, I usually read as a guest. Felt compelled to address this.
Gone through this thread and read it over and over again and I can't see where the papabrown poster remarked negative about Yoruba. His posts are actually very educative and well put. Even read that he isn't Ibo and somebody here are forcing that he is Ibo from Anambra.

This is actually beginning to really look like we are the tribalists. Lets quit this already.

Very Much interested. Please send me an email with details on travex.ng@gmail.com. Thanks

In most of  the states I've visited recently, ACN has zero presence. Most market women, Okada Riders, Artisans and the like have no idea who ACN is. Neither do many even know who Ribadu is talkless of the fact that he is contesting. It would be much easier for an ant to eat up a mountain than for ACN to defeat the PDP in any state outside Lagos.
The time is too short for any opposition party to make any impact. I wonder what they've been doing since the beginning of the year.

I agree that PDP is a bad party, but the truth is that, if the freest and fairest presidential election is conducted today with the Pope as the umpire, the PDP would trounce ACN hands down. Add that to the fact that they(PDP) have an extremely popular candidate in Jonathan.

Beaf:

I think the CIA and FBI will only be interested in his strong backing for sharia and the pivotal role he is playing at the head of Nigeria's first Islamic bank; they will checking if his life outlook had an effect on his son or if he too is involved, either as a sponsor or more peripherally.

Yep!!

The report of how Mutallab (snr) reported his son is said to have also raised curiosity of the Intelligence and Security Community. One puzzle operatives are hoping to unravel is "what the former Managing Director of UBA knew and what compelled him to head for the American Embassy instead of, for instance, the British High Commission which had in May this year rejected his son's re-entry visa shortly after he completed his degree programme in a London university".

In the same vein, the presidency, still smarting from the embarrassment occasioned by the absence of the president for more than a month now, is now running with bursting adrenaline to get to the root of this crisis. As a result, so many questions are being asked: What are some of the relationships the older Mutallab has in the world of business, government and even religion? Being married to an Arab Yemeni himself, what could the older Mutallab know or say of his son's Yemeni connections? Yemen is now widely known as the base of radical islamic fundamentalists where attacks had previously been planned on American targets.

There is so much the US Intelligence would want to know from the Snr Mutallab!

Sagamite:

You are re-tarded.

How is it Sanusi's job to check how much his friends are worth? Fooooooooooooool!

@ sagamite,

I thought you were made of finer stuff!  

Do you know that, to a lunatic, every normal man is  lunatic? Don't keep calling everyone that opposes names. I've seen u do that 5 times on this thread.

Anyway, i can authoritatively say now that the US govt has begun to beam serious searchlights on SANUSI, and his possible links to the whole saga.

There is report of impending pressure on the presidency to 'look in' on Sanusi.

More on this later.

Sagamite:

Thank you.

The re.tard PapaBrowne even tried to link the CBN governor into his mo-ronic concept.

@ Sagamite,

There is so much evidence to link directly,CBN govenor with DR. Umaru Muttallab. And remotely, to the unfolding saga.

Dr Muttallab, you may not know, IS the chief sponsor of the man called Lamido Sanusi. He brought him into the employ of UBA in 1997, and when he became Chairman of First Bank, he again brought in Sanusi as Executive Director. Also, Dr Mutallab, was the brain behind Sanusi's climb to position of MD, which was preparatory for his new role as CBN Govenor.
This is clear enough, and a well known fact.

Also, there are a number of questions Dr Mutallab will have to clarify, mainly with the higher powers that be (beyond nigeria), about his knowledge  and possible connections with his son's activities, and a wider plot (which will unravel soon).

1) What informed his sudden retirement, last week, as Chairman of First Bank? was he aware of some 'issues', and needed to leave the public scene quickly?

2) How come he said in the first report this morning, that he had reported his son's extreme inclinations to the US police, whereas, he later claimed   it was the nigerian police he made the reports to?

3) Dr Muttallab happens to be married to a Yemeni wife (not the boy's mum) and the boy has informed the US authorities that the explosives were given to him in Yemen.  Could this be mere coincidence?

4) Also, there has been a sinister  plot by some nigerians in a section of the country, which has led to the recent banking reforms. Key in that plot is Dr Mutallab and some eminent nigerians, including a former nigerian OPEC president, some arab financial goons, and of course the  executor , Lamido Sanusi. The modus of the plot has long been known, but the extent, scope and ultimate direction  of the plot is not fully known.

Only that, questions arise as to the ultimate goal of the plot.  There is speculation in certain circles already about this wider 'plot' that could see our erstwhile First bank chairman (and maybe his protege, Sanusi) , fall into the US/CIA terrorist sponsor blacklist.

Muttallab! Interesting thing is that he is a close friend of CBN Governor Sanusi.
Muttalab was the Chairman of First Bank for ten years until last week.
He appointed Lamido Sanusi as First Bank CEO in preparation for his appointment as CBN Governor.

How come he suddenly resigned last week??

Siena:

I can only see 6 kids and the rider, but either way, the maximum a bike is built for, is 2.

There is a seventh kid if you look closer. Only his hands are shown.

@ Fhemmy,

Can i have the pre-order price for a 2008 Honda Accord? Full option preffered. Max mileage - 25000 miles.

@ Wumami,

Do you have your visa now? What was the experience like?

I have found out, and i hear authoritatively it is[b] Abdusalami Abubakar's Son.[/b]

Incidentally, i hear also that the oil bunker being escorted on that same day, which was captured with 11 ukrainians, also belonged to Abdusalami Abubakar.

So, who are the real bunkerers then? The militants, or the nothern hegemonists?

It seems this rumour has finally been confirmed.

I asked earlier if this was true and no one seemed to be in the know.  I learnt about this immediately after the MEND/JTF skirmish in Gbaramatu, and the reason it is important to me is because it puts the whole 'war' in proper perspective. Which is,

The ONLY reason the military invaded Gbaramatu was because of the Killed son of the former head of state. PERIOD!


Anyone knows the bereaved Head of State?

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2009/09/16/jtf-commander-tompolo-embrace-at-oporoza/

, Yarkin-Bello had declared Tompolo wanted, dead or alive, on May 21, a week after no fewer than 13 soldiers, one of them, the son of a former Head of State were killed by militants, believed to be from his den,

Sanusi has caused so much damage to the Nigerian economy already.
Just thinking that the guy might be here for another five years is nightmarish

Nchara:

My title was a question, but painfully, the answer seems obvious. You are either a or b and not both. No wonder northern muslims have little regard for their southern brethren

Gulf Muslims feel like the most superior muslims and look down on all other Arab Muslims. All other Arab muslims look down on African muslims.
Now, Northern Muslims have little regard for their Southern brethren.
All this discrimination sef!

Thor:

Lagos was ranked as the third most dangerous city in the world both to visit and live.

It was ranked after Baghdad in Iraq and Ibadan in Ivory Coast. Nigeria is also a very dangerous country and it was ranked as having the highest crime rate in the world from the years 2003 to 2005.

It's so bad and so dangerous there that it makes Johannesburg look like Disney Land. Lagos has a much higher crime rate and murder rate then Johannesburg.

Go out with a camera around your neck - you will be robbed.
Show more than a $1 bill at a time, you will be robbed or scammed.
Go out with Jewelry on, you will be robbed.
In fact - look anything like a tourist - you will be robbed / scammed or scammed and robbed.

You will be offered "official" guides - they will scam you.
You will be offered "official" taxi's - they will scam you.

Valuables left in your hotel room - will be stolen.
Valuables left in the hotel safe - will be stolen.

"The most dangerous part of air travel, is the drive to / from the airport" and not the flight.

It is not Lagos the City that is dangerous, it is the Lagosian people who are dangerous.

Lagos in short should be avoided at all cost as it is a dirty filthy crime ridden cesspit

Seriously and sincerely, Lagos is this bad. Especially if you are a foreigner or look like one.
For all those screaming its false, honestly, can a foreigner take public tranport in Lagos and not experience most of what Thor has stated?
Lagos is one heck of a danger zone!

[

:-x

Reminds me of the words of Henry Wordsworth Longfellow:

"Lives of Great Men All Remind Us,

We can Make Our Lives Sublime;

And Departing, Leave Behind Us,

Footprints In The Sands Of Time."

ADIEU GANI! ADIEU!

lastpage:

@Papabrowne
Your ignorance stinks to high heavens!
If your educational level is up to secondary school, provided you weren't playing truancy all along, then l will suggest that you go a pick a copy of the most common Economics Textbook, (I will recommend O.Teriba to you, l doubt you could comprehend anything more advance!).

Check under the Heading "MONEY" and read the sub-topic "Duties/Roles of Commercial Banks".

It is part of the responsibilities of banks (at the macro level) to create Money (wealth).
This is done by offering "LOANS AND ADVANCES" to CUSTOMERS and charging INTEREST !
You are only required to meet the set criteria, to qualify.

You probably think they just lock-up those Billions of naira in the Vault (so that ignoramus like you can force your way-in )

And talking of Poverty mentality, l will not even bother to answer you!
U never reach, walahi!!

Go make some millions, build a few houses in choice areas of Lagos, own choice lands and have property abroad, then come back and see if you are close enough!
Then we can take a look at each others "mentality".

Lousy bloody cunt!

Looks like you are trying to be smart, trying to look intelligent here.

The problem is, you don't run a bank on SSCE Economics textbooks.

In addition, it is only when you really do have a poverty mentality, that you feel that every mention of the word refers to you. You know, it's like a complex.
Normally, the rich/rich minded will gloss through the statement and say: " oh, they are referring to them."