₦airaland Forum

If u think u know him so well then drop one of his famous exclamations (..with meaning o)



Igbos in the house ....leggo

#dumptrump now

I grew up to meet this (see pic) called FRUIT

even as an adult, I still call it fruit

please who knows the real name of this fruit?




@lalasticlala..abeg u fit help us?

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The biggest challenge in the assessment of any government is always the counterforce of a marked legion of partisans loyal to it and willing to employ both literary and physical violence to defend it and malign its critics, often without bothering to address the faults exposed in the critiques.

Over the past months, one has been challenged to explain that clear-eyed assessments of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, and even of his candidacy years before he was sworn into his present Office, aren’t expressions of regret or mortal disappointment in him. They are the basic civic vigilance required to keep politicians on their toes, because, despite their declared interests, all are selfish or self-serving in different ways and to peculiar extents. But their partisans are quick to remind you, for every honest critique, that their principals or candidates are infallible. Perhaps this is because at our schools, teachers are not motivated to point out the difference between criticism and critique in public discourse or civics or even social studies.

The truth is, for many of us who have registered that Buhari’s honeymoon is over, if an election is conducted even today between him and the ousted former President Goodluck Jonathan, none would have a second thought before casting their votes against Jonathan, whose government almost legitimised corruption and was cruel to the point of diverting funds meant for counterterrorism to personal accounts of party stalwarts and terminal sycophants. Which was the reason for the overpopulated IDP camps across the North!

Our assessment of President Buhari was exactly the mindset we expected the pro-Jonathan to exhibit when they were busy singing praises of atrocious mismanagement of resources and disdain for critics of the government. Jonathan failed because they asked us to give him more time—even sharing his statement that a four-year tenure wasn’t enough to fix Nigeria— while things were steadily falling apart. Jonathan failed because, even after squandering his goodwill and unable to meet expectations of the majority as validated in the March 28 polls, the sycophants allied and formed a sycophantic group paraded as “Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria” to extend the sufferings and dying of the Nigerian.
It’s easy for us to identify with Buhari based on shared religion and regional reasons, in the PDP apologists’ fashion of polarising realpolitik. But how would such sentimental advocacy fix the problems of the average Nigerian from Aba down through Oyo to Zaria?

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Another mischief, though surprisingly infrequent, employed by some successors of the Pro-Jonathan, the Buharists, in countering critics of the government is reminder that criticism of the government is a ploy to get the attention of the government. This is the pitiable low to which public discourse has fallen in Nigeria. Unknown is the truth that many of these critics are frequently approached for political appointments, often rejected on grounds of principle or on having realised their role really is merely to head the propaganda unit of a government department.

Early this week, I questioned the need for the popular #iStandWithBuhari movement. It’s hard not to notice them, with their outrageous spending on ads, planting billboards at strategic locations in Abuja to complement their online ads that spam the social media platforms of even the most tolerant internet users. If you know what it means to have a billboard planted on the busiest streets of Abuja and to also promote an obscure Facebook page for a large audience, then you may have an idea of the millions going down the drains for a markedly irrelevant partisan cause that masks its sycophancy in patriotic garments. This waste of resources on political frivolities is happening in a country with the third largest population of internally displaced persons in world, after Syria and Columbia!

If partisan movements designed to promote the interest of politicians, instead of that of the nation, are a confirmation of patriotism, then we must have a second thought on our disapproval of Daniel Kanu’s Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA) for the late General Sani Abacha and Ifeanyi Uba’s Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) for former President Goodluck Jonathan. Both campaigns elevated the virtues of personalities to the detriment of national or patriotic interests.

It is, to me, embarrassing that youth who ought to remain in their workstations to manage their specialised ventures and contribute to salvaging our collapsing economy are busy with sycophantic advocacies months after elections.

The greatest service to any politician is electing him to choose qualified citizens to run the affairs of the nation. But what forms a good leader aren’t the cacophonous praise songs hummed by partisans, but the determination of civic-minded citizens to ensure that electoral promises are kept.

Between TAN and #iStandWithBuhari, I don’t see any difference. If anything, TAN and YEAA pursued justifiable interests, the electoral capitals of their principals. Theirs were sycophancy with a defined purpose. #iStandWithBuhari, happening months after the elections, for, as one of them argued, the defence of an elected leader, who has the military and the para-military institutions and the civil service at his beck and call, isn’t only sycophantic but inessential. They are a collective of ambitious partisans desperate for relevance.

If indeed the partisans need such profligate movement to get Buhari working, it means they don’t even trust the man. Which is ironic.

May God save us from us!

@gimbakakanda On Twitter

Source

@lalasticlala, Seun

Buhari's Questionable Deal with Qatar -written by Olusegun Adeniyi

President Muhammadu Buhari was in Qatar last week and the major news that came out of the visit was the signing of Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) between Nigeria and Qatar to pave way for direct flights between major cities of both countries.

While I continue to wonder whether any due diligence was done by the relevant authorities before committing Nigeria to such an agreement, there are pertinent questions as to whose idea this BASA deal is. Since Nigeria currently has no national carrier, it stands to reason that Qatar initiated the idea and that is where the problem lies: I don’t believe that the interest of our people was served by the agreement.

Early in January this year, I got a mail from a lady, Mrs Chioma Okigbo, narrating one of those unpleasant experiences to which Nigerians are usually subjected in their own country. On receiving the mail (with supporting documents), I immediately forwarded them to THISDAY aviation editor, Chinedu Eze, asking him to investigate the claims and give me a feedback. Since Mrs Okigbo’s enclosed her phone number, I also called to assure her I would follow up on the matter. It took Chinedu a week to get back to me but he confirmed Mrs Okigbo’s story. Now, this was what she wrote in her mail:

“Dear Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi,

“I felt a need to share an event that happened to me with you. On 19th November, 2015, I accessed Qatar Airways website with the intention of purchasing a ticket to visit Doha and Dubai. The visit to Dubai was the major reason for the trip as we had planned a reunion of our secondary school classmates from all over the world in that location. Having a friend working in Doha, I opted to leave Nigeria some days earlier than the planned reunion dates of 25th – 28th February.

“Before buying my ticket, I confirmed from the website that the airline was able to process visa for visitors to Qatar; in fact this information was very prominently displayed on their website. I proceeded to purchase my ticket and on Tuesday, January 19th, a month to my travel date, I visited Qatar Airways website again, this time to complete the visa process.

The site redirected me to a website called Discover Qatar, which I believe is the official information center for all visitors to Qatar and had been set up by the Qatari government to provide accurate and timely travel information to visitors. I was required to complete a simple form but the first unpleasant surprise was that Nigeria was not listed among the countries under the pull down menu for Nationality.

“I found this curious and told my classmates that I had planned the Doha trip with a friend (who would be flying in from London) and she suggested that a country called Niceau was their own clever way of writing Nigeria. I decided however to contact the center and make proper inquiries.

“To my shock and utter dismay, I received an almost instant response from the website informing me that the government of Qatar does not issue visas to Nigerian nationals. This response upset me a great deal and raised a number of questions in my head: If we, as Nigerians are not good enough to visit their country, what exactly are they doing running an airline in ours?

“What is the Nigerian Government’s stance on Qataris visiting Nigeria? Do we issue visas to them or are they also not allowed in Nigeria? Why is the Federal Government of Nigeria allowing a company to run a business in Nigeria, whilst their host country feels we are all criminals?

“Anyway, I went to the Qatar Airways office where, by the way, I met some really nice Nigerians, and asked for a full refund. To add insult to injury, the airline will be deducting a 10 percent fee for cancellation! Where in the world is this fair and equitable? I felt that I needed to share this with you as I do not know the number of other unsuspecting Nigerians that would be affected by such discrimination.”

When THISDAY sought explanation for such discrimination against our nationals, the Qatar Airways Lagos Airport Manager, who simply gave his name as Hashim said: “for a Nigerian to get a Qatari visa, he ought to have a sponsor who is resident in Qatar; that is the new policy for those countries that are not listed among the nations that its citizens are allowed to visit the country (Qatar).”

And it is this same Qatar with which Nigeria has just signed a BASA deal!

For those who still may not get it, what we are dealing with here is not the usual impunity of some foreign companies operating in our country, the summary of Mrs Okigbo’s ordeal is that Qatar Airways operates and makes money from Nigeria yet our citizens are considered not good enough to enter their country like other nationals.

There are several critical issues here for both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Consumer Protection Council but I will highlight only two. First, Mrs Okigbo was practically fleeced of 10 percent of her ticket money because she did not embark on a flight to a country that would not give her a visa. Two, it is an official policy of Qatar to discriminate against nationals of Nigeria.
I believe that the humiliating experience of Mrs Chioma Okigbo should not be seen as a personal insult, it is a serious affront to our country. What is perhaps more worrying is that the presidential statement announcing the BASA deal went further to disclose that Nigeria has commenced discussions on partnership (with Qatar, I imagine) towards establishing a national carrier without providing any details.

Given that the nation’s aviation industry is currently going through financial crisis with many of our local airlines highly indebted, the Buhari administration has refused to answer the most pertinent question about this idea of national carrier that is being driven more by nostalgia than economic common sense: On what model will the flag carrier be based and what are the funding plans, especially at a time like this?

Again, coming up with a prestige project at a time Nigeria needs all the resources it can muster to meet pressing national demands betrays a clear lack of seriousness on the part of this administration. Against the background that even countries like Italy and others that are better managed have found running airlines a difficult proposition with most of them divesting from the business, I still fail to understand what is driving this obsession with national carrier. However, more pertinent is the question of why the latest announcement was made in Doha after signing the BASA deal.

Since our international aviation sector is very lucrative (Nigerians travel a lot and to everywhere in the world) and we currently do not have a national carrier, the implication of any BASA deal with Qatar can only be to the advantage of Qatar Airways. While I should not begrudge them for that, I hope the Nigerian authorities also have ready answers for the questions posed by Mrs. Chioma Okigbo. Yet, there is something in this untidy affair that should make one very sad. Apparently because we are now looking anywhere and everywhere for “foreign investors”, we don’t have a sense of shame anymore. But just how cheap can a nation be?

Source: http://www.elombah.com/index.php/opinion/5640-buhari-s-questionable-deal-with-qatar-by-olusegun-adeniyi

OK.. only one of the eight is the real Messi (bodywise)


which one?


@lalasticlala
Seun