₦airaland Forum

iiiyyyk: Obj used this same project to canvass for vote in 2006, now is 2014, gej is trying to do same.
Igbos, how many times will u be deceived before we wise up.
I rather throw away my vote than give it to gej.

So what is the remedy? Vote APC?

The duration of the project is four years. Knowing how long projects take in Nigeria, the earliest completion duration is likely to be six years. So we're likely looking at 2020.

As for visible progress - I doubt we'll see it until at least 2016.

The point is this, there has been very little evidence presented by either the Nigerian government or Julius Berger that serious work is going on at the site of the Second Niger Bridge.

The Jonathan administration either doesn't care about this or probably serious work has ceased until the environmental impact assessment has been concluded.

This is not good for either the PDP or the Jonathan administration as the many Igbos aren't based at home and have absolutely no way of verifying progress on that site. I am based in Lagos and I've asked several people who passed through Onitsha about the Second Niger Bridge - ALL have told me that NOTHING is happening that site.

As for the APC people, I must warn that your happiness with the apparent state of the Second Niger Bridge projects cements the perception that you abhor the slightest sign of progress for Ndigbo. I must warn, it will win you no votes.

We noticed the same thing about the enugu airport. Far too many of you could barely mask your unhappiness that international flights now take off and land from Igboland.

APC hasn't given Ndigbo a single reason to vote for them - & as Fayose's victory & Adamawa demonstrate, elections wont be an open & shut case of "Hausa & Yoruba votes alone will win the next elections for APC".

A word is enough for the wise.

Some idiot is quoting P.W Botha & attributing it to Netanyahu - he thinks we don't read or have any use for history.

What is not in doubt is Arab's terrible racism towards blacks, sit in the Cairo metro as a black person - the kind of open racism you'll encounter can't be described, they still refer to us as "Abeed (slaves)".

It is one record that senior political & religious figures in the Arab World have referred to Jews as "worse than pigs and apes".

kostadinis: MEMO
*Port of New Orleans, Lousiana, USA
*6th largest port in the United States based on volume of cargo handled
*Has the longest wharf in the world, which is 2.01 miles (3.4 km) long and can accommodate 15 vessels at one time
*The Port of New Orleans handles about 62 million short tons of cargo a year. The port also handles about 50,000 barges and 700,000 cruise passengers per year with several ships from Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian cruise lines making it one of the nation's premier ports.
*Built on Missisippi River, 277 Km to the Gulf Of Mexico
*Width of the River at Lousiana 2 Km
*Onitsha Port, Built on River Niger, 140 Km to the Gulf of Guinea
Width of the River at Onitsha 2.3 Km
It's possible with political will

The political will (and the money) to do this is lacking. There's a massive canal system on the Mississippi & massive engineering works by the US Army Corps of Engineers - who will do that in Nigeria?

Nigeria's entire GDP wasn't up to N150 billion in 1973 and the Nigerian Airways didn't employ 10,000 (the entire Federal Civil Service barely employed 10,000 people then).

Anyone who believes this crap must have his/her head examined - anyway that is the problem with our educational system.

Unemadu: panama is man made. suez is narrower than the river Niger.

Panama is on a narrow isthmus separating two oceans, where is Onitsha located?\

Suez is on a narrow strip of land separating Mediterranean from the Red Sea.

ChinoElects: Now read this to solve your ignorance problem!
To meet the 2014 target set by the Federal Government for the concession of Onitsha River Port, the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) said it has engaged consultants to fashion out the concession plan.
Managing Director of NIWA, Hajia Inna Ciroma disclosed this to newsmen in Lokoja recently.
She denied report that Government has abandoned the Lokoja River Port, saying work is ongoing on the Idah Jetty and will soon be completed.
She said the move to concession the river ports is aimed at maximizing the gains of the dredging of the Lower Niger River, as well as boost water transportation in the country.
Inna Ciroma further disclosed that the agency would soon convene a meeting of stakeholders in the maritime industry on the benefits of the water transportation especially for movement of cargo.
She said the first leg of the meeting would take place in Onitsha. The meeting will continue at other venues subsequently.
According to her, haulage companies, exporters, importers, manufacturing companies and members of the organized private sector will be attending the meeting.
She disclosed that the agency has started installing security gadgets along the waterways.
The NIWA managing director further said that the first phase of the project from Baro to Lokoja has been completed.
She also said that 12 gunboats acquired by the agency in 2012 have been deployed to sensitive points along the water channel to secure the waters.
She added that the federal government would soon dredge the River Benue and build a River Port in Makurdi.
http://www.championonlinenews.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=12555:fg-to-concession-onitsha-river-port-in-2014&Itemid=137&lang=en

This one na story, you & I know nothing will happen.

ChinoElects: What is really eating you up this jobless clown? Onitsha Port has come to stay will you now kill yourself? Do you know that FG pumped over 5billion to set Onitsha Port up? Are you now saying that FG threw in their 5billion as a scam? Get a life dude and stop arguing over what you do not know!
Onitsha Port has come to stay and there is no rubbish you write on the internet that can stop it. Your ranting only ends on nairaland as a jobless daft!

I'm not interested in juvenile insults - especially from people who don't know they are talking about. If the "Onitsha port" wasn't a scam, we would have seen it in operation, long ago.

And mind you, "dredging" is not a one-off event, it has to happen regularly or the channel/river is silted over again.

No point arguing with you, when your "port" starts operation, tell me.

Unemadu: Suez and panama canals. Why not Onitsha river port?

Unemadu: Suez and panama canals. Why not Onitsha river port?

Take out a map, compare the geography of Suez & Panama with Onitsha - no point for argument.

Evergreen123: Are we not still exporting goods from the east of the Niger?
My point is that there has been no tangible reason for the delay in dredging n port activities

What are we "exporting"? Onitsha can never be a "sea port", it is a river port & river ports can only accommodate river barges, not ocean going vessels. What this means is that you will still have a trans-shipment point for ocean going vessels at either Warri or Port Harcourt.

Presently, Warri & PH aren't dredged to the depth to accommodate the really large ocean-going vessels from places like China, so it makes economic sense for say, Maersk to berth at Lagos with really large vessels than to either use smaller vessels for Warri & PH - then Onitsha or risk its larger vessels running aground in the Niger Delta.

Lagos is kept as Nigeria's only serious deep sea port to satisfy a cabal, but even at that, West Africa's only true deep sea port is at San Antonio in Cote d'Ivoire - really large vessels offload there to smaller vessels going to Lagos.

Serious business people will tell you the Onitsha port is a scam used to buy Igbo votes. Onitsha will only be useful as an internal logistics hub - i.e. moving bulk goods like cement & steel from Onitsha to say, Baro or Makurdi - & then the North. It isn't economically feasible as an export port.

What Igbos should fight for is a deep sea port at either Calabar, Ibaka, PH or Warri - and a solid railway connections to Onitsha. That was what Donald Duke tried to accomplish with Tinapa, but the Yoruba/Lagos cabal killed that idea by refusing to dredge the Calabar channel.

So let's understand the true state of things.

Evergreen123: How did the royal Niger company use the port for palm oil exportation again?

That was before containerization & in those days we did a lot more of exports than imports - not like today.

"All is fair in war" and "starvation is a weapon of war".

99% of all Yoruba people and Northerners believe this with their whole hearts - so we shouldn't have any problem here.

Can we all agree that:

1. Ndigbo shouldn't receive any further compensation for the Civil War.
2. The North shouldn't receive 5% derivation for Boko Haram.
3. All Northerners affected by Boko Haram should receive the equivalent of £20 (about N5,000, we could round it up to N6,000).
4. After this payment of N6,000 is paid to affected Northerners (only those with bank accounts), we should leave them to either hustle or to go and die (after losing loved ones, property and breadwinners).

Is everyone happy now? Can we close this predictable debate?

If you guys had a governor like Theodore Orji, you won't even have the energy to talk.

ChinoElects: ^^^And who gives a fvck about what your ND thinks about?
Onitsha Port has come to stay. I saw further expansion work going on there last month. I am sure is one of the recommendations of the concessionaires. It will shock you soon when it rolls out for operations.

Nothing is happening there. If that "port" starts operation in 10 years time, collect a million dollars from me.

IGBOSON1: Can anyone in-the-know explain a bit on the benefits of a free trade zone? I know google is my friend and all that......i'm interested to hear about it in relation to Enugu!
You see why we need to get that River Port at Onitsha functional......the port President Jonathan commissioned with so much fanfare more than 2 years ago! I bet the Niger River has silted up again back to pre-dredged levels......that's assuming they did a proper job in the first place!

That Onitsha port is a scam - what we need is dredging Warri port, it is a few hours drive from Onitsha.

Let me explain this to you, even if you dredge the Niger at Onitsha, it will only accommodate shallow draft vessels which will first have to load at either Warri or Port Harcourt (you can't have ocean going vessels at Onitsha, just river barges).

Anyway, to cut a long story short - the Hausa & Yoruba cabal don't want a functioning port in the Niger Delta - you can see how they killed Tinapa. And Jonathan is too docile to do anything about that.

This thread is not for petty insults. Interesting analysis on Enugu.

ENUGU: NEXT FRONTIER FOR REAL ESTATE GROWTH IN NIGERIA?

What makes Enugu a growth frontier for real estate development? More to the point, why should we be looking at this second tier city? The answer is relatively straightforward – look at the data.

Despite the megacity hype, in the coming decades the vast majority of urban Africans will live not in sprawling urban centres like Lagos but in small and midsize cities like Enugu. The United Nations projects that by 2050, seven out of 10 people will live in urban environments and that roughly two thirds of this global urban growth will happen in Africa. Yet by 2025, only seven percent of the continent’s city-dwellers will live in Lagos, Cairo and Kinshasa – the continent’s megacities. Add the projected populations of popular capital cities like Johannesburg, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam to the total and the headcount remains far below the overall figure for Africa. That is because much of the growth will happen in smaller cities and towns.

In 2025, nearly half of Africa’s urban- dwellers will reside in towns of fewer than half a million people, with cities of one to five million people accounting for 27 percent of the overall urban population – the second-largest slice of the pie. Despite how we think of their larger and more distinguished cousins, these smaller cities are the dominant spaces for urban experience.

Many smaller African cities that lie just off the radar are experiencing a quiet transformation, largely unnoticed by the press and outside the purview of big business and foreign investment.

Take “Coal City” Enugu as an example. Enugu is by most measurements an ordinary city. A landlocked town of less than four million people, it does not make the list of important Nigerian cities – an honour generally reserved for Lagos, oil-rich Port Harcourt and the capital Abuja.

Yet in less than three years, rental rates in Enugu have more than doubled; in some cases, the value of land has tripled. Local estate agents confirm that the annual rent for a standard three-bedroom flat in the city’s New Haven enclave – a medium-to-high density area – is around $3,078, up 150 percent since 2011. Residential properties that were acquired at $7,850 are now valued at $48,300 – less than half a decade later.

So what has fuelled the rapid transformation in Enugu’s Real estate sector?

Strong Government Investment:

The city’s land and real estate market took off in 2011, the year its current administration, headed by lawyer-turned-politician Sullivan Chime, began an unprecedented and aggressive infrastructural development programme. Some 350-odd kilometers of road have been repaired and resurfaced in Enugu city and nearby Nsukka, and just under $120.8 million awarded in contracts to do the same for 250 kilometres of roads in outlying areas. Unsurprisingly, works and infrastructure received the highest allocation of any area in Enugu’s 2014 public budget – a total of $94.2 million.

A Growing Regional Focus:

Beyond the increased investment in transforming Enugu’s infrastructure, Enugu is also the focal point of a renewed interest by many from Eastern Nigeria. As the former administrative capital for Eastern Nigeria, Enugu has always appealed to the region’s predominantly Igbo community as a place to own a second home for vacation or retirement, especially for those in the Diaspora or living in other parts of the country. In addition, recent terrorism in Nigeria’s north and a plague of kidnappings in nearby states have driven an increase in settlers to Enugu state. Finally, a significant amount of the property demand by real estate investors and hoteliers looking to cash in on new serviced estates, a pumping nightlife scene and a budding tourism sector.

An Emerging Transportation Hub

The lack of a port or strategic waterway has limited the city’s potential as a major import base, however with progress towards an international air cargo hub in nearby Owerri and an inland seaport in Onitsha in addition to rumours of a free trade zone, Enugu is well placed to benefit from growing trade activity in the East. Apart from supporting direct flights to Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, the recent internationalisation of the local Akanu Ibiam airport has seen a significant increase in passenger traffic. Ethiopian Airlines now operates four connecting flights weekly to various destinations, including Beijing and Dubai, and KLM is also bidding hard for a hanger.



The future of urban Africa may currently be reported in the rise of megacities like Lagos, but the mostly unreported Coal city of Enugu will also have a few things to say about where the continent is going and how to get there. While investment attitudes towards African cities still display a preoccupation with the economic and political capital cities, do not overlook the “midi-cities” that make up the majority of Africa’s urban population and growth areas. Do not overlook Enugu.

http://www.lamudi.com.ng/journal/enugu-next-frontier-real-estate-growth-nigeria/

I have absolutely no doubts that there are more Igbos than Yorubas. Whether there are more Igbos than Hausa/Fulanis, I don't know.

Please can we focus on the development of Enugu & stop wasting time on juvenile rants?

Back to the original question.

Sullivan is not popular simply because.

1. He is not in APC.
2. APC (& Tinubu) control the Yoruba news media (which drives Nigeria's news media).
3. He doesn't pay for media attention unlike Rochas, Oshiomole, Amaechi, Aregbesola & Fayemi.

Governors that don't pay for media attention like Imoke, Amosun or the guy in Gombe are rarely ever in the news.

Why should Igbos vote for an Hausa politician?

1. Another state in the Southeast? The North will be the first to block it.
2. Devolution of powers? The North will be the first to block it.
3. Resource control? The North doesn't want to hear that word.
4. Sovereign national conference? A Northern leader will rather die than convene one.
5. How many Igbos have been killed in Sabon-Gari, Kano? Uncountable.
6. Sharia law? Hausa politicians support it 100%
7. Reliable census? Hausas oppose it.

So if you can give Ndigbo a good reason to vote for a Hausa politician, you've given them a good reason to vote for APC.

"There should be a strong Igbo presence in both parties"

That is bullshit and it is not "strategic", there is no point dissipating our energy in both political parties, when we can be of maximum impact in the ruling party.

Go and ask an Onitsha trader how he gains from having an international airport in Enugu, a few hours drive from Onitisha, or how much he saves on trips to China for that alone.

The Yoruba & Hausa leaders you want us to follow in APC would they have even considered giving Enugu international flights or building a Second Niger Bridge? Hell, no.

Even now they claim they want "Igbo votes", but they cant even MENTION A SINGLE PROJECT they will execute in the South East, should they get to power.

We have no time for them.

For those of you threatening Ndigbo with "political irrelevance if they don't join APC" - I have these few questions:

1. How "politically relevant" have Ndigbo been since the end of the Civil War?
2. What have the Hausas done with their "political relevance"? (Hint: consider their literacy rates).
3. Obasanjo was head of state for 11 years, what did Yorubas accomplish with the "political relevance"?

Nigeria is f*cked up, either way. You people have spent the past 40 years trying to make life difficult for the Igbo man, without knowing that if you make life difficult for Igbo traders, they'll jack up the price of goods, making life difficult for everyone.

That has been the motivation behind denying Enugu an International Airport, refusing to dredge Calabar's port, refusing to build a Second Niger Bridge - all this was an attempt to frustrate Igbo business & direct economic activity outside the former Eastern Region.

Guess what? You didn't succeed, Igbos thrived regardless. Today you are threatening us with "irrelevance" if we "don't vote APC". My answer to this is a big middle finger.

You want us to vote for Buhari who built a refinery in Kaduna as petroleum minister, but couldn't find the money to build a Second River Niger Bridge as head of state or PTF chairman?

You want us to vote for Atiku who killed the Calabar port dredging proposal (& TINAPA) as VP, but cornered the entire Onne port complex in Port Harcourt due to his greedy interests?

You want us to vote for Kwankwaso, that fundamentalist who is busy using Hisbah (religious police) to harass Igbo traders in Sabon Gari & destroying their goods. (He made a show of destroying N48 million worth of "alchohol"?

There is no reason on earth why a right thinking Igbo man will vote for APC.

bootstrap: To be honest, that part of the igbo man, i respect. Always have.. always will. (Discussion for another topic). But i am basing what i said here on the topic at hand.... an igbo man leaving a party because of differences. The assumption i made then... was that the igbos in this context are interested in the presidency. I like that Ndi Igbo supported Jonathan (i personally dnt like him), but it was a smart and strategic move. I am just saying, right now that it seems like the winds might change, they shld be equally that strategic by having key players in the emerging party and not totally running away from it.
ps: I do not care for politicians or any party, they mostly all same criminals. But i love strategising, i love winning and being on the winning side. And no Nigerian shld trust or believe any politician either.

Go & review your geography. We are the closest neighbours to the Niger Delta, with Africa's largest crude oil deposits, it will be strategically stupid for us not to support a Niger Deltan.

Secondly, there were problems between Igbos & minorities in the eastern region. What we are doing is rekindling our friendships with people who we have deep historical & economic ties with. It is a brilliant strategic move.

I keep asking these questions:

1. What plans does APC have for the southeast? (The only response I get is "Ndigbo should vote for APC or we will finish you when we get to power or you will be irrelevant).

2. The Hausas (who are leading APC), what plans do they have for Nigeria (apart from the usual Northern control of government & the military)?

Rochas is the major point man of APC in the southeast is developing cold feet, so what do you want me to do?

Finally, we aren't interested in the presidency. Normally, by this time like 20 people would have come out claiming they want to be president. Interestingly, not a single major Igbo politician has come out declaring he wants to be president.

If APC wins, we can join APC. Life continues - how much stake do we have in the next elections, anyway - is any Igbo man on the ticket. Having said all this, Nigeria doesn't have a future.

bootstrap: Now, this is someone i respect.... *duff my hat sir....... valid points you have raised.
But in all the instances you mentioned Ndi Igbo chose a single side and they always got burnt. So this is what i am proposing....
1) Ndi Igbo shld be first and for most, Igbos and a strongly united one, Party affiliations come second place. They fight in public but shld go back to the east and strategize
2). Ndi Igbo shld have strong representation in all the political parties.. ALL..... so they can benefit either way the wind blows.
3) The strong igbo caucus in each party will help when the other regions in the party wants to f**k them over.
Now... you made the same mistake you guys have been making for a long time in ur 6th point tho..
" APC will not win the next presidential elections, so these permutations are meaningless."
NO PERMUTATIONS ARE MEANINGLESS MY FRIEND!! ALL PERMUTATIONS ARE VALID UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE TO A CERTAINTY.
I repeat, Ndi Igbo shld have strongholds in both PDP and APC, even if not currently interested in the presidency, at least be the strong force that you guys deserve to be in this nation.

There's no point being sentimental, Ndigbo are the most realistic people in Nigeria.

Do you think an average Igbo man gives a flying f%ck who wins the next elections, his primary concern is his business & as education statistics shows, he's doing a lot better than those "who control politics".

We decided to support Jonathan because he's closer home & more likely to focus on projects closer home. No Yoruba or Hausa man was ever going to permit international flights out from enugu or commit to building a second Niger Bridge - neither Buhari, Obasanjo, Abacha or Babangida would commit to doing that - the historical records are out there.

APC is full of Yoruba & Hausa people who have zero commitment to facilitating economic growth in the southeast. The great Zik allied with Balewa - who was all too ready to dump him for Akintola. The historical record is out there too.

Finally, be smart like an Igbo man - no politician is "fighting for you". Tinubu has acquired his second private jet, but some Yoruba children are starving, how has he helped them?

bootstrap: first of.... let me say i respect all Igbos and what they represent. ( I am actually Igbo frm my mothers side).
But Igbos can be silly, greedy and unnecessarily myopic a times. Which explains why we might not have an Igbo president anytime in the nearest future. Igbos must learn to be more strategic. No one is going to hand them the presidency. Y'all have to fight for it. Only way to do that is to be more strategic. An igbo man was amongst the founding fathers of PDP, but today they more like strangers in that party. They foolishly formed APGA, and made it a regional party. No regional party can ever win a presidential election in this country.
Criminal as Tinubu cld be, he is a good strategist and knows that ACN cld never be a party at the centre so long as they are a regional party, hence their merger with CPC.
Hypothetically, If APC wins the presidency 2015 or 2019, which strong Igbo man is in that party. That means the beginning of another long era of no presidency for the Igbo.
Common sense shld have told the Igbos that they need a very strong representation in the newly formed party, Just incase the party becomes a force to recon with. Even if it means "sacrificing" some strong PDP or APGA members. Its all about strategising and learning to be at the right place at the right time. The foolish Igbos are busy insulting the new party, without knowing what the future holds. You can always give it to the SW, they know how to adapt well and get what they want.
Do not alienate urselves frm any new movement, have some strong representation there, If it fails, y'all still have ur guys back and if it succeeds, you guys get to gain. But never never never align only with one party and hope to be handed the presidency at ur time. Y'all will just keep being f**ked over.

This is brain dead analysis.

1. Igbos have allied with the North severally in the past: Zik/Balewa, Ekwueme/Shagari etc & have gotten practically nothing out of it. Ekwueme couldn't even deliver the Second Niger Bridge (when the Hausas built a refinery for themselves in Kaduna). So if Yorubas want to go on a wild goose chase with the Hausas, that is their problem, not ours.

2. Igbos have nothing in common politically with Hausas - Hausas want Sharia, they don't want devolution of powers, they don't want resource control, they don't want any changes to the exclusive list - we have absolutely NOTHING to gain by being politically allied with them.

3. APC as a party doesn't have any Igbo interests at heart. The will select an Hausa man as President & a Yoruba man as VP, what it means is:
a. The Hausa guy will rule from 2015 - 2023.
b. His deputy (a Yoruba) will rule from 2023 - 2031.
c. Another Hausa man will rule from 2031 - 2039.

That means that under APC, we'll have 24 years of Hausa/Yoruba rule until an Igbo man is even considered. In PDP it will be quicker.

4. We are NOT interested in the presidency at this point in time. After we saw what happened to Ekwueme in Jos in 1999, we realized that there is a pathological hatred of Igbo in all parts of the country. (Obasanjo with zero support from his fellow Yorubas got the nomination). So we are better off facing our business & using influence to get what we need.

5. Control of the presidency doesn't mean jack - go to Northern Nigeria, they've ruled Nigeria for almost 38 years - immunization rates in parts of the North are as low as 5%. Many aren't going to school, under-aged marriages etc. Those people have NOTHING to offer. If you like, follow them for 100 years.

6. APC will not win the next presidential elections, so these permutations are meaningless.

7. In 1967 - 70, we learned an important lesson, fighting against the Hausa-Fulani Oligarchy is the same thing as fighting against Britain. We'll fight against them when we are ready to fight Britain, not before then.

So please continue to entertain your Lagos-based fantasies, don't travel outside Lagos, continue to believe that Tinubu-funded APC propaganda reflects Nigeria's realities.

CFCfan: I think the other airlines (Nigerian Eagle, Emirates, KLM etc) are waiting for the international terminal to be completed, before launching flights into Enugu.

How far has work gone on the international terminal?

I haven't read or seen anything - I doubt it would be ready in the next four years.

enigmang: No matter how we try to avoid it.. we still vote with tribal sentiments… there is no way APGA will win LAgos even if Tinubu is the flag bearer...

That's not true, Ngige won a senatorial election in Anambra State on the platform of ACN. That can never happen in the South West - APGA cannot even win Local Government chairmanship in Amuwo-Odofin. So people should remove the figurative log in their eyes before they start pointing to specks in other people's eyes.

The other important consideration that people in the South West tend to flippantly ignore is "sectional interests". It is very easy to see how APC protects the South West's "sectional interests", but what exactly does APC offer the South East?

This is not the time to give us nice sounding nonsense about APC "being the party of progressives". Yerima is there, Ikimi is there, Modu Sheriff and all sorts of rogues are all there. The only reason why those Northern governors left PDP for APC is because PDP isn't going select a Northern candidate for the presidency in 2015.

In simple language, Kwankwaso & Wamakko would have never left PDP if Jonathan was an Hausa man - so anyone who wants to pretend that "APC has nothing to do with tribal politics" is welcome to continue deceiving himself or herself.

The major reason APC exists is to make an Hausa man president. We in the South East don't see anything special about an Hausa man and we don't believe they'll magically transform Nigeria when they control Abuja. If that was the case, Nigeria would be looking like Dubai right now.

If APC was about nominating a competent person irrespective of his ethnic affiliation, there would be more acceptance in the South East - a South Easterner could even join the primaries and contest for presidential candidate. But what exactly is the South East going to get out of APC? At the most the vice-presidency. Is that enough for all of us to leave PDP and then play not even second fiddle (that position is for Yorubas), but third fiddle in a political party?

Secondly, you need to understand that the South East isn't crazy about the presidency. They just don't want a Nigeria where the North is as dominant as it was in the past - they want a more level playing field. Whatever Yoruba people say, APC is about returning certain segments of the North to a dominant position - and that automatically excludes Northern Christians, Igbos and people from the Niger Delta.

So we people in Anambra don't want to elect a governor who will actively work against President Jonathan and what we perceive to be our "sectional interests" (exactly what Rochas is doing in Imo State).

1MCN: It's rather disturbing that the problem the people of Anambra (and indeed Nd'Igbo) seem to have with Ngige is not his personality but his party. This has a lot to tell us about the Nigerian politics and the political populace.

APC should fix its perception issues. The fact that all South Western APC governors take direct orders from Bourdillon (Tinubu) doesn't help the image of the party in Anambra State. Igbos are the last people who want their governors to be controlled by Tinubu - & the fact that there is NOT one single independent APC governor in the South West doesn't help matters.

During APC campaigns in Anambra State, how many people from the North came? It was just Tinubu and his group. Do you think Ndigbo want to join that group that has zero internal democracy. If their governor joins APC nko? Will his voice be heard when issues that really matter are discussed.

You people really need to do a few things.

1. UNDERSTAND why Ndigbo are not yet sold on APC. Merely shouting "bigot" at every turn isn't going to help anyone.
2. DEMONSTRATE that internal democracy works in APC first. Look, if I was a Yoruba person, I'd jump on the APC bandwagon - but if you were Igbo, would you want to join a party with as little internal democracy as APC?

Now some people will insult me, but the smart folks will think about what I just wrote.

ibn akogun: Damn you really don't understand the issue at hand. Northerns power drunk?? Yes. Tinubu can beat them to their games Yes. Why are zik and his fellow shitard used and dump?? Money call the shot for peeps from their part of the world. And they can easily be bought and sold like goods.

You decided to use the expression "shitard" in the same sentence as Zik, a man I respect - a man you are unlikely to ever equal in terms of life achievement.

I can deduce you are a juvenile lack respect or even commonsense.

I will not continue this discussion, have a nice day.

ibn akogun: Awo wasn't number two but the finance minister. I gat sympathy for mko. He gat his hand stick with loads of dirty deals with the northern oligarchy. The new agreement is done with mindful bitter experience of the past and I know tinubu is a smart genius. Take a look at tribe of peeps that gat majority of the important post in the new apc , then you gat to respect tinubu and his boys.

Awo was de facto "number two" in Gowon's administration.

No problem, we will see how much of a "genius" Tinubu is when folk like Babangida, Abdulsalami & other Northern heavyweights throw their money and their numbers in APC. We've watched this movie several times in the past - the South South and South East helps the North to win elections, only for them to be discarded when elections are won.

Northerners are interested all this "progressive" nonsense talk - they just want the North to control Aso Rock again. If Tinubu's political machine helps them do the job, no problems - the will use and dump it, the same way they used and dumped Zik in the First Republic, Awo after the Civil War, Ekwueme during the Second Republic and Saro-Wiwa after they had no use for him.

Don't say you weren't warned.

ibn akogun: Even though am not a fan of the northern politicians, I think something need to be done to curtail this mistake administration. And I don't think the northerns can box tinubu aside like the peeps you listed in your post. You will be surprise how he will do to them what obasanjo did to them the last time. My own point is just for gej to leave.

What magic can Tinubu perform? He can stop the North from winning elections in the South West, but once Northerners control the party machinery - it is over - Tinubu either dances to their tune or he goes back to being a regional politician.

Let me remind you that if APC wins, the entire Northern PDP will join APC - & you think that if Awo couldn't deal with those people, Tinubu can?

I laugh.