₦airaland Forum

SmartMen:
If you think Lagos has it all, let the sea port in Akwa Ibom establish and a world class airport out there then add embassy to any of the south south or south east states.

Still part of the 50 years I said

Details coming

I am from Enugu but I tell you this

No state in Nigeria will overtake Lagos in the next 50 years.

Lagos mainland alone is better than Uyo

Until you go to the Island.

You can tell us uyo is good. Don't compare with Lagos.

Join APC and OPC

Anything rogue group that has PC

Jokerman:
Lol... Who no go one baptize here Sadly, this is not the prerequisite for making heaven... I'll gladly do my 2nd baptism here anyway

Which heaven?

Every position in this Zoo is headed by Muhammed.

And you expect progress

We have seen how Tijani led our Attack at the Under 20 World cup.

Wow.

Fear women

It is not up to APC to determine who is a terrorist.

The useless old men thought they could sit at a round table and determine who is what in a secular society such as Nigeria.
If there are known terrorists in current Nigeria, they are Buhari and El-rufai

maisauki:
from being a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to becoming ordinary adviser to a party man, I pray you reading this won't retrogress

You mean he should not talk again because he was a minister?

Nodogragra4me:
Sanctifying foolishness seems to be your calling
Some people have gone for 13 months without salary in Nigeria and are still living

Animal.

You haven't answered how he survived without salary for 6 months.

ademidedavid:
Sir, u donated 6months salary cos you have 6years salary in your account....me wey don je gbese b4 salary enter already , no fit try am abeg

This criminal liar should tell us he he survived without his salaries for 6 months

MRSANITY:
Later ignorant people will tell us that those paying tithes or financing the church generally are poor.

Unfortunately you are the ignorant here.

So it's true because he said it?

How. Any years salary did Danhite donate?

What about Buhari, the number 1 citizen? How many years salary did he donate since it was church donations that won elections?

Ignoramus

Fake

EdiAbali:
English people are backward thinking people,
They stop behaving like people in the 13th century.
The world is leaving them behind.

And the Nigerians are the world's role models.

Blockhead

Chance and time happens to everything.


What's that bible verse again?

hisexcellency34:
Wny is Davido treating Sophia Momodu like shit despite all the sacrifices the lady made for his career to be where it is today? Ingrate!

Shut up.
Which song did Sophie participate on?

When did he join apc?

Great man DSP ways with best ideas.

The problem is that the North with their scam and criminal ways of recruiting the police and army and other agencies will now have to do it to themselves.

They won't agree. GEJ should have signed thos off long ago.

helinues:
So what is the moral lesson from this epistles?

Return to school if you can't see that yourself

Lazy youth

Nigeria has a smaller national budget than Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and South Africa. All these countries have fewer citizens, yet significantly more money to spend on them. While Nigeria’s 2019 budget amounts to $29 billion, South Africa, with a population almost 4 times smaller, will spend $130 billion. Egypt has a $90 billion budget with 100 million people. Elsewhere, countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Vietnam have larger budgets than Nigeria. No one considers these nations “rich”. Yet, among Nigerians, there persists a stubborn myth that Nigeria is a wealthy country. Who planted this idea and why does it survive?

It started with Nigeria’s 1950s pro-independence leaders who needed to mobilize popular opinion against colonialism to push the British out. So, they regularly emphasized Nigeria possessed abundant economic resources being carted away by the British. “Help us drive them out and we will use these vast resources to transform your lives”, was their essential message.

Many Nigerians believed these often exaggerated claims of abundant wealth awaiting distribution and duly mobilized for independence. By 1960, then Governor-General Nnamdi Azikiwe was constructing national pride on the idea that thanks to her resources and population size, Nigeria was already an “African power.” And this was before crude-oil exports really took off in the mid-1960s. By the 1970s, General Yakubu Gowon was telling Nigerians their country’s problem was not money, but “how to spend it”.

Whatever Gowon’s intentions, his words were interpreted by many Nigerians to mean theirs was a rich country, period. Over 20 years later, during my secondary school days, we would often recall Gowon’s famous statement. Anytime someone brought it up, we would all laugh with some delight. It made us feel like part of an exclusive members-only club; the club of rich nations. Sorry, no poor countries allowed.

It also gave us a sense of hope and relief because it meant that all the problems we observed around us – no water, no light, new slums everyday – these were all easily solvable. Nigeria had the money to make all these disappear fast. The minute an honest government took over, it would be farewell problems, hello prosperity. There is great comfort in believing solutions to your problems are within arm’s reach. That all it takes is for X to happen. That’s why demagogues and charlatans will always have followers.

The first time someone challenged my belief I was from a rich country I became agitated. It was a girlfriend of mine who wasn’t Nigerian, one of those annoying types who know things they have no business knowing. I mentioned Nigeria was rich. “No, it isn’t. I checked. It has a smaller economy than some countries with just 5-10 million people like Sweden or Norway and a lower GDP per capita than the likes of Albania, Guatemala or Mongolia which are all considered poor countries,” she retorted. I struggled to contain my anger. What kind of rubbish was this girl telling me? That my entire national self-concept was wrong? Impossible!

I think many Nigerians are still psychologically reluctant to accept Nigeria’s true position in the global pecking order today. Our sense of national self is largely built around the notion that we are a country very rich in natural and human resources, just one good government away from greatness. Some optic illusions further render this belief hard to shake.

In every state, there are a few dozen people (usually involved in politics) who possess such visibly stupendous wealth, we can be forgiven for assuming there is a lot more where that came from. Thing is, there isn’t. If you shared Nigeria’s 8.83 trillion naira national budget equally among Nigerians, each citizen would receive a paltry 45,000 naira or so; hardly enough to keep you in Panadol for the year.

Of course, states have budgets too, but even Lagos, by far Nigeria’s richest city, has a modest 852 billion naira ($2.4 billion) to spend on 15 to 20 million residents this year. For comparison, Johannesburg has double that budget for fewer than 5 million people. And it still struggles to provide basic social services. What we have in Nigeria is a few hundred people looting and squandering such a disproportionate amount of Nigeria’s modest resources that an illusion of plenty is sustained among the populace.

Another factor fuelling this “there is money in Nigeria” belief is that many people pretend to have more of it than they actually do. My friend who runs a crèche in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in Lagos says she has lost count of the number of parents who drive the most expensive Range Rovers yet struggle to pay their children’s nursery fees on time. Of course, aspirational Nigerians don’t live above their means just because, they do so in response to societal pressure for them to prove they are “somebodies”; worth talking business to, hanging out with and treating respectfully. Raise your hand if you have ever pretended to have more money than you really do so as to be treated respectfully somewhere in Nigeria (my hand is raised high).

But the end result is that when you combine the authentic and visible wealth of a few hundred Nigerians living off the state with the lifestyles of all those trying hard to appear rich, the rest of society can be forgiven for believing there must be a lot of money in Nigeria.

This is bad because it encourages many intelligent people to focus not on thinking of how to create wealth, but on how to corner their own “share” of this fabulous national cake. Either by getting into government or by winning a government contract and then behaving as though the pockets of the state are bottomless.

Another consequence of this illusion is that it diminishes the sense of urgency required to tackle the existential threats Nigeria faces, ranging from mass poverty and unemployment to uncontrolled population growth and growing insecurity. At the back of many minds seems to be the implicit assumption one needn’t worry too much. Things will sort themselves out. There is money in Nigeria.

But Nigeria is not rich. And with its rapidly-expanding population leading to ever scarcer resources, only a furious national focus on wealth-creation can save the country. The Nigerian state, currently viewed by many as a fat cash-cow, is actually a very skinny cow in desperate need of some serious grass in order to stay alive. Else, one day, it will simply stop breathing.

4600 euros is more like 1,850,000

Which makes the machine expensive

What's the big difference between ML350 and GL450?

People separate from actual marriage and these ones are concerned about separation from dating.

You are the problem

GEJ built schools for them and you can't maintain it

I was traveling to Ghana through MM Airport Lagos yesterday. Each security check point concentrated all their efforts on begging for money to the extent that they forgot to give me departure stamp.
It was when I Got to Accra Airport that an immigration lady discovered this.
I actually found out mid air but felt that perhaps there is Ecowas non stamp regulation or something.

Well, Ghana stamped me arrival and allowed me into their country.
They are likely going to stamp me departure in a few days back to Lagos.

My question now is, what do I do when I return to Lagos Airport. I need them to stamp that departure because it could cause me problems while traveling to other countries outside Ecowas.

Do I approach them with the issue or what can I do?

He is right.
Some evil women won't allow a man to be a good father

Auxtin85:
In as much as I don’t support any form of violence against women but sincerely speaking some women’s tongue cuts deeper that razor blade

Exactly. There are things that comes out of women's mouth that is worse than this.

And trust me, the lady was fighting back. She wouldn't get this bash if she ran away.

We have been hearing this forever.

BlacSmit:
Vanity! After this one, tell them to do heavenly edition.

Poverty

DEBUCHMANNY:
but how's that your business? It's there headache not yours

Typical idiot.

This is how Nigeria will divide finally.

When Electric cars is everywhere, Oil will be useless.
The Fulanis wi have no reason to hold on to one Nigeria.

Everyone will go separate ways and develop at their own pace.

NgeneUkwenu:
Almost 15 comments, yet the pigs are yet answer the question

Hypocrites!

After several years, you are still contented with being a worthless nairaland celebrity.
Akwa Ibom suddenly joins Biafra because of airplane your god scammed the nation with.

nairaland celebrity. Worthless thing.