₦airaland Forum

Outstrip:
Larez I would love to talk to you. About how well you have adjusted in Nigeria since you got back.

oyb:
Larez, you got it WRONG. gun possession will simply become yet another tool(big cars police escorts)  for the elites to use to oppress the rest of us. who do you think will be the first to get licencses? do you think those drivers etal will be able to afford to buy handguns( well maybe that where our er  ibo brothers come in - i can already see the er bend down select firearms market, plus the brand new 'china' .45s etal)

what we are likely to see from the poor etal is violent resolutions to disputes. my neighbour refuses to turn off his 'i pass my neighbour at 1 am, i go out and shoot him. my wife suspects me of cheating - to hell with hysterics, shoot the asshole! and so on and so forth. . .

Outstrip:
Thanks Larez. Nigeria is just not ready. Our mentality has to change. Our way of reasoning has to change. The way we treat each other has to change. Thanks for taking the time to break it down cause I sure was not.

Outstrip:
I am not being drawn anywhere. I am going exactly where I want to go with it.

oyb:
@ mogentle - what stops you from giving a way forward?

please stop babbling.

It is the responsibility of the government to protect its citizens.

do you really believe that if everybody in nigeria had licensed access to guns, they would be used solely for self defense and nothing else?

your mind is so fixated on your CAN authorized revenge /the xtians strike back /eye for an eye/ sticking it to the fulanis/almajiris that you fail to see the larger picture.

perhaps when you get that call at work that you son accidentally shot himself ehile playing with your gun you will think otherwise, or when irate husbands/wives resort to shooting each other. or maybe when you rearend someone, and before saying anything, he comes out waving a gun.

anyway, no problem since you are so sensible, lets arm everybody. CANs solution is the best. i only hope all you NRA enthusiast will not start talking out of the other corners of your mouths when Nigeria becomes the world's homicide capital

blackspade:
I wonder how fast it would take for "self-defense" to turn into pre-meditated murder if this bill was to pass?

We're in the middle of a global financial crisis with millions of people losing their jobs around the world (including Nigeria)- IMO, the last thing this nation needs is more people carrying around weapons.

The people proposing this have to be insane.

ambyzown:
I'm being forced to eat my words by posting on this forum again, but I couldn't help but say something in response to Larenz.
We have excellent mechanics in Nigeria who can fix heavy equipment for you, but you will be helping them a great deal if your equipment isn't so Hi-tech. You are very correct in your business analysis and the redundancy factor, that is the textbook approach to business management, but you have overlooked one critical point. Your potential Market I see you are siting your quarry in Cross rivers state, so that means your target market is the south east, assuming yours is the only quarry there, can your target market take 1920tons of granite daily? Thats 64 trailers per day. This is key to the success of your plan, as this is the figure you have used to determine that you can afford a dozer with an airconditioned cab for your operator.
Don't get me wrong, I would really love to get a good-looking aerodynamically streamlined dozer with ABS and skid control  But my competitors are using $35,000 D8k's  and can afford to crash the market with lower rental rates because they can buy 4 machines with the same amount it will cost me to buy 1 state-of -the-art dozer. So technically they'll be making 4 times what I will.
If your competitors are JB and Setraco, by all means buy brand new equipment. And I like your strategy of using a machine for just 4years and then selling it. Maybe I will be opportuned to buy one off you when you decide to sell at rock bottom price
D8N's are very recent machines so you can expect them to be expensive.
I am more interested in D8k's as they are rugged and basic. The parts are readily available and I do not have to buy from CAT offices alone. Also the engine is the same as the D8H which Dumez used when they were in Nigeria so there are a lot of mechanics trained by Dumez out there looking for work.
I'm located in Benin City Edo state, and I'm into equipment rentals.
Cheers guys.

EZE B:
@Larez Our Quarry is located somewhere in Edo state towards Auchi axis, and we are not into granite quarrying, we are into Limestone and Dolomite minning. Although we have occassional occurence of granite in our sites too and this has also made us consider purchasing equipments as crushers to crush the granites.

We are considering not so recent equipments due to cost of maintenance and high technology involved in maintaining more recent models.
SETRACO is located very close to our quarry and so we can help you out if you have any questions concerning quarry operations. I will be willing to co-operate with you any time you need my help.

@Promise72 Please did you say you already have one dozer in nigeria and it is steaming very well? please i would like to talk with you concerning other issues that bother on its performance and maintenance. Pls just send me a mail with your personal contacts and phone number so I can reach you. my email is ezekwere2000@yahoo.com phone 08085562288, 08056112392, 08064008077.

promise72:
@ Larez,

Im not in Nigeria yet, but i can tell you that there no need to spend $185k on a D6 Dozer. There are competent mechanics in Naija to fix those you just have to find them.

Back to the Dozer, the older the better. Try btw 1985-1990 Dozers. They dont require elaborate diagonistic equipment to fix and ppl in Naija are familiar wt them.

Are you gonna be flying in someone from the US everytime yo break down? Not practical. Buy something "Low Tech" and roll. Good luck.

ambyzown:
Promise72 wrote:
Just bring in anything" mentality is why we see a lot of broken down trucks/equipment on the expressway in Naija everyday. Why would a $80,000 machine just give you only 6 months of work? Especially a dozer.

The reason why dozers in Nigeria cannot give you more than six months of trouble free operation is basically due to the Nigerian factor. You can hardly find unadulterated diesel to buy. Because kerosene is cheaper than diesel most petroleum marketers mix diesel and kerosene and sell as diesel. Prolonged use of such fuels causes damage to the injector and nozzles, when this happens power output from the engine drops and in a bid to compensate for the power loss, many operators drive the machine to its limits which takes a toll on the crankshaft.

Lets make some cost comparisons, One brand new D8h/k cylinder head costs N220,000 while the same costs $2100 in the US before taxes
Transmission pump is N60,000 here while it costs $1100 in the US. One brand new crankshaft here will cost you N500,000 but its almost $10,000 in the US. This is the reason why rebuilt dozers cost much more in the US.
My argument is this. If I can buy a machine for $30,000 and it gives me 1 month of operation, (most will give u 2) at N120,000 per day, I can comfortably budget N1m - N1.5m for a spare engine, and be good to go for another 4-5months.

As for the man who spoke about Iron clad insurance, what happens if the dozer you bough with an "Iron clad insurance" breaks down? are u going to ship the dozer back to them for repairs? Have you seen the way bulldozers work in sand quarries? or the way they are used for demarcation work?

I have made my point, He who has ears, let him hear. I currently own a dozer that cost me less than $30k and its steaming quite well. I plan to buy another one sometime in September in readiness for the 2010 season, and I will not pay more than $30k for it. This will be my final post on this matter.

dieter:
>>> @ ADEXFEM

Good day.
Thank you, but I have meanwhile already given it to a clearing agent to avoid demurrage.
Forwarder said it takes average one week to prepare everything in Lagos and I should not delay because truck + Camry are already arriving now.

Regards
Dieter

felele:
By the way, if those are your interiors, they are quite nice. Although things like the staircase balustrades would probably not stand up to the kind of punishment Nigerian children are capable of dishing out!

felele:
Re-invent the wheel? Hardly. Here is an image that you really should study properly. It is a photograph of a Sango shrine taken in 1910 and now stored at the Frobenius Institute.

http://www.clarku.edu/~jborgatt/bg_shangoshrine1.jpg

please observe the columns. I think it's safe to say that the colonialists did not build this shrine, and that it had been built long before they arrived in Lagos in 1861. This makes it abundantly clear that columns were an integral part of Yoruba architecture before the arrival of the white man, and that if I'm guilty of copying or interpreting anyone, it does involve a copious amount of local content.

Keep arguing. You just might learn something.

My Brother: I laughed when I saw the picture. It is obviously an interpretation of a ROMAN classical column. I am glad that you showed me the picture, because my personal oral history claims that my fore fathers (Yorubas) migrated from the lower Euphrates. If I am correct about archeological discoveries from Yorubaland, then it indicates that the movement started during the time of the great Roman kingdom. And it took a few hundreds of years to come settle in Western Nigeria. Sango, Ogun, and Oya, are distinctly similar to the greek gods Odin, Thor and the female one that I forget. Thor also had a hammer as a weapon like Sango, I think. If you were to look at how ancient Yorubas dressed for battle, you will see some resemblance as well. The question of history is and will always be 'how far back', and 'who was the keeper of the records'. Thanks for the picture though.

Once again, I must let you know that I actually like your buildings from what I could see. I was only trying to add to, and not take away. On the issue of creating some Nigerian whatever you called it,  You know sey dat one na storeeeey. Berger builds like Oyinbo, and every Nigerian wants a Berger house. Very soon, they will all want a LAREZ house. lol

felele:
For your further education:

http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/africanlegacy/old_oyo.htm

Check this out, and where you see mud course, read brick. Oyinbos are notorious for refusing to acknowledge that any smidgen of greatness could have emerged from our part of the world. Greatness is not bequeathed. It is seized. Acknowledge yourself to be great, and eventually, you will begin to internalise it, and soon enough, people will begin to acknowledge it. If you continue to denigrate your own people, and exhibit the self-loathing you displayed in this brief conversation of ours, you will continue to feel inferior, and ergo, BE inferior.

felele:
From the bolded above, it's plain to see that you in fact agree with me. I really would slow my roll, if I were you, with this argument about redbricks not being Nigerian. I was fortunate enough to see some authentic village life, as it pretty much was before being touched by "modernisation". It would interest you to know that in some parts of Ondo, FIRED BRICKS were being used for construction BEFORE contact was made with the "white" man. This I know for a fact. There is a picture somewhere on the internet, which shows the palace of the Alaafin of Oyo in pre-colonial times. It was built of brick. Man, know thyself. If you refuse to open your eyes and your mind to learn your own history, you will be taught nonsense by your teachers (apologies to Abami Eda - that's Fela Anikulapo-Kuti to you).