₦airaland Forum

no picture ni?

ChEkWaS IyKe :
I like d praiz n worshirp sension. Cus it mks me feel d presence of GOD

It gives me fulfillment cos i feel free to demonstrate in the house of God and also the preaching.

otokx: your guess is as good as mine - average

u r so hopeless. at least be positive. anyways, thumbs up to d guy

We are d leaders of tomorrow!!! Is either our teacher dey lie or the tomorrow neva land We are d leaders of tomorrow!!! Is either our teacher dey lie or the tomorrow neva land

i wonder why they always fight for their god instead of other way round. oga ooooo, tufiakwa unlimited

freecocoa: Please while you guys are it, make una pray for me too.

My tooth aches like mad.

The prayer point should be "let the tooth troubling cocoa fall out on its own without her visiting the dentist"

Than you all.

you are healed in Jesus Name cos the balm of Gilead is upon.

Heaven Lord, i pray for perfect healing upon Goodluck Patience wherever she might be. Thank You Dear Lord for always answering our prayer whenever we call on Your name.

i take pap whenever am sick...... and whenever i take pap, i feel as if am sick

I don't know if this is right section for this but i kept asking myself questions immediately i saw it.


THE GENERATION THAT LEFT TOWN
Do you know of the generation Y concept? Do not feel bad if you do not. I did not myself until recently. Among other things, this generation of Nigerians born from between the late 1970s and the 1990s is angry with the generations before them. Maybe they deserve to be. But it had never quite been framed before me as it was recently.

At a recent conference on education, I provided a bit of a summary history of the rise and fall of education in Nigeria, referring generously to Eric Ashby’s work and the Sir Ashby Commission’s very kind remarks about the state of higher education in Nigeria at Independence. I noted also sir Ashby’s regrets about how the dream had gone sour, in remarks just before his demise.

One of the participants came forward with this stunner of a question. If higher education was as good in those days as she keeps hearing, she queried, how come it produced leaders that have managed to, and have continued to, make so big a mess of the country? For some amazing reason, I was able to come back on the shotgun, quick on the draw on that very fundamental question. My generation, I said, was not responsible for the mess because it left town but it probably deserves blame as good, if not worse, for not having the character to challenge and stop the rot. So, how and when did my generation leave town?

I began with remarks made at the presentation, a few weeks ago, of a book on achievers, by Fola Adeola. Said the founding Chief Executive of GTBank, “Thirty years ago, I was referred to as a young man, today they are still referring to me as a young man”.

For me, the point Fola was really making was that the men who ran Nigeria 40 years ago as 20 and 30 something-year-olds without the benefits of the education Ashby felt so proud of, still run Nigeria as 70 something year olds and still call those 10 years younger young men, just as they did 40 years ago. Hold it there. I know you will look at the 30 something-year olds who dominate state Houses of Assembly, National Assembly and even one or two Y generation governors and cabinet ministers.

The truth for me is that my generation which enjoyed that high quality education found there was little space to add the value it could, and in the main, walked. They are the champions of the brain drain. I remember when I returned in 1982 after my PhD. A group of us used to gather together around the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs because there was a core group of graduates that worked as Research Fellows at NIIA. They included Femi Aribisala, Olisa Agbakoba, Babajimi Peters, Mohammed Garba, Henri Yondowei, and Emeka Aniagolu. When Emeka Kalu Ezera, myself and a few others from outside arrived, almost on a daily basis and the big arguments on policy, nation-building and serving the common good started, you could almost feel the walls respond to the passion.

Out of all that came a current affairs journal called Spectrum, engagement with the intelligentsia of the generation before and policy thinkers like Izoma Philip Asiodu and his peers.

Then many lost heart. One by one, even that group which came to define my generation, headed North and West. They left the country to positions in Europe and North America. I still recall an opinion essay by someone who wondered why I was still in Nigeria. And the person was not being nasty. He was actually very kind to me but concluded Nigeria had no room for people of talent. He was more or less reflecting the view of what was considered the appropriate thing to do by those who could in my generation, leave town.

Of our group, all that is left in Nigeria besides me, are Aribisala and Agbakoba. Dr Aribisala, one of the finest political economists of his time, educated at Europe and America’s finest universities, long became a pastor, a wonderful thing to serve God but a huge loss nonetheless to a discipline in which he was one of the very best.

Emblematic of how my generation left town was a story told by an expatriate CEO of a pharmaceutical firm about their frustration in testing the efficacy of new drugs in the 1990s. They would start with a group of Professors of medicine at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, and six months later all would have left for Saudi Arabia, then they would turn to another group only for exit to happen three months later.

So, who was left to lead and how did Nigeria lose the benefit of the quality education of the 1960s, ‘70s and early 1980s?

I think the 30-something-year-olds who took power in the 1960s have generally stayed in power. In many cases, they have cloned themselves in the new young men in power who have to worship at their altar and, sometimes, sacrifice their souls to be let in. They also incorporated a few that got that education the questioner was wondering about. To deal with why those with quality education they have brought in is to understand two phenomena. One is the Corporatist state in post-colonial Africa and the other is the idea of being in office but not in power.

The Corporatist state sought to suck in certain elements that seemed able to threaten the system. So the President of the Bar Association was appointed the Attorney – General and put in a position to thwart the rule of law to show loyalty to the incorporators, and the President of the Medical Association became minister of health etc. In a variant of this process, the incorporated is initiated into a new paganism, money worship. The new idolatry makes all human relative in value to what they own or how much can be squeezed out of them. So people forget how to speak truth to power and say to the ruler who is clueless: You are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sycophancy becomes a high art until the beneficiary falls from power and becomes object of the scorn of these sycophants as they move on to the new men in power. The other crippler of the educated that is brought into office is lack of real influence. At a Centre for Values in Leadership annual lecture a few years ago, the guest speaker, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, of the United Nations, when he was challenged about performance of people like himself when they are in government, his retort was that there is a difference between being in office and being in power. Many incorporated ministers are in office but not in power. Their real influence, if we are to be honest, was marginal.

My generation, left town or was ignored, except for those who turned to people power with mortgaged consciences and money worship, a faith that somehow sucks the finishing of good education from human consciousness such that all that is seen is how “my Mercedes is bigger than yours”. It also sets adherences on a path of reckless abuse of the commonwealth to get money not earned so as to buy things not needed in order to impress people they do not really like.

Prof. Wole Soyinka may see his generation as “a wasted generation”, mine simply left town and became useful to other societies. The trouble is that many of us got the education we are taking elsewhere at little or no cost, thanks to the Nigerian taxpayers. This is why I get into trouble with my many Nigerian physician friends who now live in the United States when I tell them that while their American colleagues were borrowing a fortune to pay their way through medical schools, they were taking freely received training to the US from where they harass me about how come we cannot fix Nigeria!

The guilt of my generation is a big one. It is not the misleading of Nigeria. They were not around to do that. The guilt of my generation is that education did not give us enough character to stay and fight those who did not realise that the duty of every generation is to make its shoulders available so the Generation Next can better see tomorrow to make it better than yesterday. Instead of fighting off those who took power in the 1960s at age 30 so we can make ready a better place for the generation Y to build on with their ICT know-how and technology savvy disposition, we simply said these guys don’t take prisoners and left town.


www.punchng.com/opinion/the-generation-that-left-town/

LWKM......ROTFLMSO.
NA U SABI

Chaydee: Fashola must have mastered one sided sleep, no wonder his head is Flat

indomie advert all d way, no rival.

in all, Lagos is too much. ur experience will determine ur view abt lagos bt all ds issues/points are d reason LAGOS is'LASGIDI'. at my area, power supply is superb.

Sijo01: Its stil morning,
hot Akara wil complet d brkfst magic.

See hw chronic bachelors dey show us dere food routine.am sure say all d joint wey dem dey sell gari,ankara, kulikuli, cowbell(#10), sugar(#5) be ur regular hot joint. SMH

@poster, abeg wake up from ur slip. U r feeling cool abi, i pity ur head

honeric01: So all of una dey claim "pretty" now abi? SMH

Abi na, beauty is in d eyes of d beholder. I can decide to be my own beholder.LWKM

Its very simple n noted baba iyabo
dat means Iyabo is a rogue n she-thief. @ those dat claim he fought corruption, obasanjo used EFCC to fight those dat didn't dance 2his tune. Its obvious dat our leaders r bunch of thieves n annoyn set of animals. He spent 8yrs in office wt failed third term bid((we all know hw it went down wt a lot of bribe claim), will he say he does not know about Ibori corrupt ways.he shld be ashame of d judges they appointed. Abeg, make we leave matter for matthias jare

And so wat? Shld we all now start worshipin him because of ds?

gbadexy: I can now understand the north's distrust of western media.even the in the main article,the reporter was putting words in buhari's mouth.
when he said God willing something will happen in 2015 if there is no transparent election,and that they will go a disgraceful way,i think he was reffering to the F.G and revolution.the dog and and baboon may also mean battle between cpc and the govt pdp,perharps legally.so insinuations and deliberate misrepresentation should not be attached to his speech just as he said they reported that he was not going to contest again.

d fight btw d FG n CPC or revolution from Buhari, who will bear d wrath? Who suffered d pain/suffering of his last so called Threat. If not for God, would ve lost my Sister who served in Nassarawa den all because of his crododile tears on TV n his modified boko haram threat. Plssss, u n i know dat d common Man on d street will bear ds(d blood shed)
ȋ̊ pray dat it will not get to my family IJN

If we want good leader or a structured Nigeria, ds Modified Boko Haram Buhari is not it @ all. He made such statemnt last year during election n also weeped on national TV, we all no d aftermath of it all. Nw ds, dat means we shld all be on our heels because he wants 2be president n if its not achieved d common man on d street(especially d southerns) r in it.

Come 2think of it, hw will he mention free n fair election? Is it wen he did not win?
Oga Ooº°˚ ˚°ºoo, Olorun ya wa ya esu!!!!

Isn't it obvious dat 90percent of northerns(their leaders including deir governors) r Boko Haram Chief Executives.

Com 2015, if Buhari is not president, blood shed gallore...... What doed he have 2 offer gan sef.... Is it 2 teach us hw to shed blood 2 get whatever we want?
SMH

If we want good leader or a structured Nigeria, ds Modified Boko Haram Buhari is not it @ all. He made such statemnt last year during election n also weeped on national TV, we all no d aftermath of it all. Nw ds, dat means we shld all be on our heels because he wants 2be president n if its not achieved d common man on d street(especially d southerns) r in it.

Come 2think of it, hw will he mention free n fair election? Is it wen he did not win?
Oga Ooº°˚ ˚°ºoo, Olorun ya wa ya esu!!!!

Isn't it obvious dat 90percent of northerns(their leaders including deir governors) r Boko Haram Chief Executives.

Hmmm!!!!

D coins dat was 'refurbished' d oda time, is it stil existing? Can a common man on d street use it, r banks 'practically' accepting it?
If #50 is changed 2coins, dat means what we get for 50naira will automatically move to 100naira n above.
Will dat Mallam tel us d 2000 n 5000 policy is in line wt d cashless policy or anoda one. I SMH for Naija

tellwisdom: Whats this suppose to mean?

Its not necesary u know and apart from dat, na by force most u comment

Remember those days!! because am d last born, chicken legs r permanently mine. No food on sunday morning, she will say 'its good to fast 2church, so dat one can be ministered to'.i can neva forget d sound of my tommy evry sunday, all d worms in me will play world cup, champions league, premiership, FA..... Name it bfor we get home for food.
D irony is dat, uptil date, i find it hard 2eat bfor goin 2church because its now a normal tin 2me.

To me as an individual, Nairaland is more educative n informative dan FB. Also, FB is full of vry tom, dick n harry.
We can't take away d fact dat FB is a worldwide tin bt nairaland gvs me broad knowledge abt tins n also get d good, d ugly n d bad comments dat crack my ribs anytime anyday

Orisirisi...... 50M Oga Ooº°˚ ˚°ºoo.
A doctor frend of mine @ OOUTH told me immediately it happend bt tot it ws a joke.he told me earlier dat she has bn released bt with reduced ransom

Studipity on d parade....... Abeg he shld jump into Lagoon n swim for life

lalaosky: u even hyped that failed human test!...as far as am concerned,dat double faced epileptic beast of burden has no talent...mtcheeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww

Studipity on d parade....... Abeg he shld jump into Lagoon n swim for life

What is d essence of d buses wen d impact r not felt by d common man on d street. Abeg, make dem retrieve am bak as soon as possible jare

Kobojunkie: You left out the fact that many of those on Naira 18,000 per month have about 2-3 other mouths they feed. This is the case with many married couples in Nigeria. Many of them with at least 2.5(this is being seriously conservative)kids.
If we were to assume that the two parents worked and earned Naira 18,000, it still comes down to about $1- $2 dollar a day for each mouth in the family, which is still within the margin of SERIOUSLY POOR.

@times, jst one of d parents works for salary. Dat means d whole family r depending on d 18k while som married men earn less dan 10k as monthly salary n dey r married wt kids.

Biro(big n eleganza was d best den), maggi(seasoning cubes generally), indomie(all noodles), helix math set, st louis, nasco biscuit........ Etc good old memories.....@poster, tanx for ds