₦airaland Forum

ProudlyLagos:
they can’t be asking for Biafra and blame us for that and still want to stay and enjoy the privilege of one Nigeria……you should direct your sermon to those asking for the separation of the country but still want to retain their right to movement to other region, and btw what is the number of Yorubas in eastern region compared to the millions of ibo in yorubaland? thank you

ProudlyLagos:
🤣😂😂muuumu, na FG go help you start your process of getting Biafra……you just ignorant and know nothing…..when you ready to have your Biafra, you will lobby your reps in NA to start the process and also start by relocating back to your region and stop your migration to Lagos and yorubaland, then we can take you clowns seriously……till then, you are just any empty noise maker….people that want biafla but can’t stay in their region😂😂

Kewtt:
then break from the north

CodeTemplar:
Thats a lie. Is saudi arabia paying high tax? Kuwait or Bahrain?

In a situation where there is good amount of resourcces available, management of that resource covers taxation. Taxes is largely a cut of what accrues to the citizens.

Karlman:
Exactly!
That's why Iran killed Netanyahu and his cabinet but Israel quickly replaced them with AI because there is no press/ journalists allowed in Israel.

Iran is winning the war. Very soon the new supleme Khamenei will come back to Iran and the moment that happens Israel will lie that they have killed him meanwhile it is just his drawing that Israel will bomb

Gerrard59:
Constant electricity to industries is the solution, but the gas - source of electricity - has to be cheap as well. Interest rates, too, have to be low. There is no way Nigerian entrepreneurs can out-do Chinese and Indian investors who possess capital with 3% interest rates.

CodeTemplar:
Your suggestions is rubbished by govt wastage. You use scarce funds to sponsor religion among other wastages but are saying people need to pay more tax. Is the money from natural resources like in Norway not good for citizens welfare? It can be used for welfare but was mismanaged and instead of managing it well, they declared that proper management can never be achieved. Very lame.

Karlman:
Israel have always been the one dealing with Iran from the word go!

Israel killed Ayatollah and the rest of his damned crew.

And Israel will continue to decapitate the axis of evil unto the last one of them.

Kukutente23:
I don't see the point you're making
Those things are subsidy as well and can be easily mismanaged. At least we all saw what happened with the humanitarian ministry and school feeding. So you can't say one subsidy is good simply because it is done by white people while another is bad. It smells of inferiority complex

I don't think there's anything wrong with using half of the GDP to take care of the citizens. The GDP is cultivated by the citizens as well.

Kukutente23:
Since Norway is your new standard. Norway pays stipends to unemployed every month and pay parents stipends to take care of their children. Norway is also one of the countries with the highest minimum wage in the world.
Shouldn't we also take a cue from them abi that one no dey?

nairalanda1:
It's a fair estimate based on the 2006 census.

Sheuns:
No subsidy yeah? Okay.

Why can’t the government improve the standard of living of the people?

Why can’t they make electricity stable?

Most of the petrol and diesel bought at fueling stations are used to power generators for homes , businesses and factories.

The governments before now that sold fuel at lower prices are not stupid.

Buhari once said he doesn’t know what’s subsidy. Means he never paid anything of such during his time as military minister and head of state.

There’s no country on earth right now that doesn’t do something that benefits all its citizens.

Subsidy removal is a scam used by politicians to steal more from the people.

No one forced any nation to sell crude at certain price to its citizens. It’s your oil. You can sell at whatever price you wish.

Sheuns:
Stop this dead narrative. The federal government spends $0 in producing crude oil.

They secure no production costs. Why can’t they set aside the amount required for local consumption and sell at below international market price to Dangote?

Tell us why.

dapadawee:
Why can't they killed them again
They killed them unaware
Is the war over
Over to you

Lithiumite:
Petrol is still being subsidised in Angola and the govt is assidously working to end it

dragunov:
They are not.

Macphenson:
This is the only country they should be comparing Nigeria with. A lot of my Togo artisans left Nigeria to this country and today they are all doing great.

I wonder why Nigeria is not selling crude to Dangote at off OPEC sales.

Gerrard59:
Forbes never still explain how Alex Karp is a Black man o.

Moniya4Real:
Why are our billionaires only in cement and oil? Hopefully, we would have tech-billionaires some day.

Fearurcreeator:
Student loan don dey nah

nairalanda1:
Remember also that Thailand and brazil have the weather and climate advantage.

tasalanoni:
That is where a responsible leadership comes in. I'm a farmer and I can tell you with every measure of certainty that the price difference entirely based on yield advantage..
In major rice producing countries across the world, farming isn't a blind practice of scattering grains and prayerfully waiting for a harvest. It is real science! Paddy fields are properly leveled to precision to guarantee water distribution, land preparation is excellent for achieve the fine silt necessary to eliminate poor germination and guarantee reccomend plant population per area, seeds are carefully produced to eliminate undesirable genetic traits, nutrient supplementation is data driven and not reckless, irrigation is available to support natural rain feeding in drought spells, harvest operations are timely and silos are accessible to minimize post-harvest losses, security is priority without farmer-herder hostilities. The average per hectare yield across Nigeria hovers around 2tons while an upwards of 8tons is normal in many parts of the Asian rice bowl ecology.

Rather than invest in land development, irrigation, input subsidies, government storage and buyback/ end consumer subsidy, and tackling insecurity, the government of the day chose the seemingly easier but unsustainable option of importation. It all screams politics and never people or policy driven leadership!

nairalanda1:
They can't because their operating costs are higher than the Thais and the Brazilians. If they did that they would be broke in minutes and there would be no rice production in Nigeria in a few years

The fact that mills have to run on diesel generators instead of mains power supply, the high cost of transporting rice and the fact that Nigerian rice producers cannot meet national demand fully all contribute to the high operating costs

IGBOSON1:
Igbos' should apologise for what exactly....and to whom!? Aren't you placing the cart before the horse on this one? You're yet to buttress your assertion regarding 'Biafra carrying out war crimes in the middle-belt', and you're talking of 'Igbo apologising first'! This only shows the level of your 'concern' regarding what Ndigbo were put through in the north in 1966, and what we were subjected to during the uncivil war of 1967-70! Can't say i'm surprised at your position though! At this point, i think i need to restate my own position on this apologise thing: I never asked for or expect the Yoruba nation to apologise to Ndigbo for anything, as they never sent anyone to do or say anything to anyone; i expect the Nigerian state to apologise to Easterners/Ndigbo not only for their unwillingness or inability to protect us during the pogrom in the north in 1967, and for the subsequent war crimes carried out against us during the uncivil war, but also because they DID NOT bring anyone to justice for those crimes; i expect Northern ethnicities to apologise, either collectively as a region or individually, for the pogrom of Easterners/Ndigbo in the north in 1967, and my reason for having a different position with the north compared to my position with the Yoruba is that THE POGROM IN THE NORTH WAS A MASS-PARTICIPATION EVENT THAT WENT ON FOR WEEKS IN THE TOWNS AND CITIES OF THE NORTH AND WHICH WAS EXECUTED BY THOUSANDS OF NORTHERN SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS.....IT WENT ON FOR WEEKS UNTIL THEY FELT ENOUGH EASTERNERS/IGBO HAD BEEN MURDERED TO SATIATE THEIR LUST FOR BLOOD AND VENGEANCE!

You keep asking a question to which i have repeatedly given you a answer to! I branded Awo EVIL because he was the architect of the Gowon gov'ts economic/food blockade of Biafra/Igbos' during the uncivil war. The useless Nigerian army couldn't defeat the plucky Biafra army on the battlefield so Awo, being the diabolical fella he was, dreamt up the 'brilliant' idea of murdering non-combatant Biafra men, women, children and foetuses as a way of forcing the capitulation of the Biafra army! When he was asked about it, he reportedly said 'all is fair in love and war'....kinda similar to your stand on the matter innit!? He owned that murderous policy with his full chest, so he should equally own the label of evil fella that comes with it! This is the same man you now want us to believe 'was working for the Igbo within the Gowon gov't'! Abeg, no make me laugh! With 'friends' like him, who needs enemies!

There you go waffling on again! A northerner dreaming up and being part of the war crime of economic/food blockade of Biafra wouldn't have come as a surprise to me...they hate Igbos' and have shown as much right from the 50s to date! But for a fellow southerner and christian to have been the one to have dreamt up and helped impliment that devilish policy against Biafra/Igbos'.....a man who never believed in 'one Nigeria' to begin with, that went beyond the pale and showed his true character as a person. To be honest, i really want to take a forgiving/let-bygones-be-bygones regarding Awo and the events of the late 60s, as it's not in our character as Igbos' to bear such a long grudge on anything, but Yoruba like you are really not helping matters with the mocking, bragging and dismissive attitude towards our losses! For avoidance of doubt, this is what Google AI had to say on the question of whether food blockade was a war crime:
Yes, intentionally using the starvation of civilians—including by blockading food and essential supplies—is considered a war crime under international law, specifically prohibited by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Such actions are illegal in both international and non-international armed conflicts when targeting civilians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(crime)

So in a war you brag your 'Nigerian side was poised to win', you had to go down the route of war crimes which targeted non-combatants...a non-battlefield and criminal tactic, in order to 'win'!? You assert you're comfortable sacrificing the lives of millions of non-combatants to 'shorten a war' you claim could have been won by your Nigerian side on the battlefield!? You think you're talking to kids here!? I notice how you puff out your chest with the claim of your murderous Nigerian army being capable of 'winning the war', yet at no point did you mention the massive logistical and military support they got from the British gov't and their murderous Arab allies! That war was, to all intents and purposes, a jihad by a fundamentalist muslim north against a christian south, and Awo played his own part in helping the former to 'win'!

You're now delving into the realms of fantasy and conjecture! A people who for centuries never had a history or the inclination to invade their neigbours territories and build a empire, would all of a sudden have a taste for empire building in 1967-70 when they had their hands full fighting off invading murderous jihadist vermin from the north!? C'mon mate.....try and be reasonable!

I will always support a group of people fighting for what they may think at the time was their best interests. I may not agree with their reasons for doing so, but i'll always support their righty to do it! My point here is to analyse the situation decades later to see if the right choices were made and who was on the right side of history. If we don't learn from history or our mistakes, we're bound to repeat them! And from what's going on in Nigeria today, and seeing how well dug in and entrenched in our positions some of us are, it's apparent some are yet to learn lessons from the mistakes of the past!

I've said my piece on that unification decree thing, and it doesn't bear repeating myself! Dude, it was a military dispensation which meant there had to be a command-and-control administrative structure answerable to Dodan-Barracks! Simplicita! Even after you got rid of Ironsi, and had the chance to change what you accused him of trying to do to make Igbo 'dominate' everyone else, you not only kept that same command-and-control arrangement, but went further to change the fiscal/federal arrangement and created more states! Yet according to how you and your northern allies tell it, Ironsi was the problem! Go figure!

Which city would have been number one in West Africa had Nigeria not existed!? Well i'll hold my hands up and admit i can't give a definitive answer on that one, but i sure as hell know it wouldn't have been Lagos! Lagos is what it is today not on it's own steam but owing to the commonwealth and efforts of ALL Nigerians and ALL Nigerian states/regions!

Looking back on the Awo imprisonment saga, i equally feel Ironsi should have released Awo when he took over after the coup! For all his brilliance, any Igbo will tell you the man was a bit naive and didn't have a knack for reading the room or seeing the bigger picture! He had his flaws, but that's on him and not the entire Igbo ethnicity!

Yes, there was a NPC/NCNC gov't at the time, but a fair assessment would tell you the NCNC were the junior partners in the relationship and wouldn't have had the final say on issues of the day. Here are names of the last batch of ministers of the Balewa gov't before the coup occured:

Third Ministers & cabinet: 1964–1966
Minister of External Affairs Tafawa Balewa
Minister of Defense Muhammadu Ribadu Inua Ribadu
Minister of Attorney Gen/Justice Taslim Olawale Elias
Minister of Finance Festus Okotie-Eboh
Minister of Transport Zanna Bukar Dipcharima
Minister of Aviation Jaja Wachuku
Minister of Trade K. O. Mbadiwe
Minister of Industries Augustus Akinloye
Minister of Works Inuwa Wada
Minister of Housing & Surveys Adeniran Ogunsanya
Minister of Labor Adeleke Adedoyin
Minister of Education Richard Akinjide
Minister of Mines & Power Maitama Sule gggg Minister of State Mapeo
Minister of Economic Development Waziri Ibrahim
Minister of Natural Resources & Research Alade Lamuye
Minister of Communications Raymond Njoku
Minister of Internal Affairs Shehu Shagari
Minister of Information Ayo Rosiji
Minister of Health Moses Majekodunmi
Minister of Establishment Jacob Obande

IGBOSON1:
Care to point out EXACTLY where i asked for the Yoruba to apologise for the war crimes of some of their sons during the uncivil war? Refer back to my previous post....it was the Nigerian state i said ought to have apologised by now to the Easterners/Igbo. They failed in their basic duty of providing protection for Easterners/Igbo living in the north who in 1966 were subjected to weeks of a pogrom in which TENS OF THOUSANDS of their men, women, children, babies and even unborn foetuses were targeted for elimination! The Gowon gov't never bothered to stop the mass killings, and TILL THIS DAY no one has been prosecuted and sentenced for said heinous crimes! Following on from the pogrom came the uncivil war which witnessed war crimes carried out by the Nigerian side which even you with all your bias and revisionism can't deny! The federal gov't hasn't apologised for this as well and made restitution to the wronged parties. I should also add that if it turns out, as you alledge, that any Biafran soldier was tried and found guilty of war crimes, then the actors on the Biafra side still alive today should equally be called to apologise and where none are available then it should fall on Ohaneze to issue said apology and the states that at the time made up Biafra should be saddled with rising funds to pay restitution to the familiesof the victims or to the town where said war crimes were said to have been carried out! Fair is fair, and i demand the same standards in morality and civility from everyone, no matter their ethnicty....that's how a society addresses old wounds and grievances and moves forward! I'm still waiting for a link to a independent source at the time that would help corroborate your claim on Biafra soldiers 'war crimes' in the middle-belt.

At no point did i say the Yoruba or whoever was not within their rights to fend of a 'invasion' by Biafra forces who were only going after the serpent in Lagos to cut off its head! Why would Biafra have designs on 'colonising' the Western or Midwestern Regions when they had their hands full with Biafra? Even though there were Igbo in the Midwestern Region, at no point was any part of their territory included in Biafra territory....and if you have evidence to the contrary, you could provide it here! The point i was making was that, with the benefit of hindsight today, we can now look back at events and decisions made during the period in question and conclude Awo and the Yoruba intelligensia that supported him allied with the wrong side! You say otherwise of course, that Awo was right in allying with the north because the Igbo were....how did you put in now?....'colonisers' intent on 'colonising' Yorubaland and hence were not to be trusted! I have explained exhaustively that there's no historical antecedents portraying Ndigbo as 'imperialists, 'expansionists' or 'colonisers' to warrant you taking such a position and placing your trust in the North instead...specifically, the Fulani! Even today, with all you know about the Fulani, you still won't change your position on the matter, probably because your dislike and mistrust for the Igbo is greater than your fear of the Fulani! And if i were to ask you what informs such a position, you'd yet again start to waffle and beat about the bush!

I just chuckled on reading your 3rd paragraph! You sit there and posit with a straight face that the south-west hasn't benefited disproportionately in the siting of federally enabled projects, institutions and policiesn in relation to the south-east! I read that part of your post and said to myself that some things never change! This was what i said in one of my previous replies to you:

And in addition to what i just quoted, we can also add to the physical projects: TRADE FAIR COMPLEX and FESTAC TOWN.

The offshoot or consequence of the disproportionate attention Lagos is getting (that is besides making Tinubu criminally wealthier) is that the socio-economic traction it generates would equally be felt in neigbouring south-west states like Ogun! You see how the uneven playing field and political-economy in Nigeria has disproportionately benefitted the south-west over and above other regions? Now, when we turn our attention to the south-east, we'd notice that not only has the hegemony controlled federal gov't marginalised and cheated the region, but they've also gone ahead to sabotage south-east territorial interests by slicing off large swathes of hydrocarbon rich territory and placing same in Rivers state. My own LGA in Rivers state, ONELGA, had a entire community, Egbema, cut in two....with the part richer in hydrocarbons removed from the then East Central state and placed in Rivers! These are irrefutable facts, yet you sit there and 'argue' that the south-east should be futher cheated and deprived of federal allocations and appointments owing to how their boundaries were delineated by YOU (by YOU i mean the hegemonic alliance of course)!

You see the part in your 5th paragraph that i bolded! I read that part and shook my head in disbelief at how inventive you are in propaganda disemination and revisionism! So we're to now take Lawanis' word for it that the same Awo, who on seeing the federal side not winning the war on the battle field, decided to suggest to Gowon the mounting of a food and economic blockade of Biafra, even though said blockade would target non-combatants (men, women, children, babies and unborn foetuses)....we're now to believe such a man 'had the interests of Ndigbo/Biafra at heart and hence decided to work for them within the Gowon gov't'!? That's the new yarn you want us to believe abi!? And see how you craftily turned Awos' threat to the north of pulling the Yoruba out of Nigeria if the Igbo/Biafra were allowed to secede....see how you turned a statement that's obviously a threat to Igbo/Biafra interests into a 'loving and caring gesture by Awo towards us'! He was so 'concerned' about us to the point of suggesting Gowon try the war crimes route to ensure the Nigeria side 'win' and Biafra doesn't secede! At this point, i think it's best you quit trying to launder Awos' image as you're not doing him any favours!

you're waffling in your 6th paragraph, and what's left of your 'arguement' is all over the place! Awo and the west were not prepared for war, you say! Fair enough! So they now had the option of allying with either the Biafra/Igbo or the North/Fulani, and they chose the latter! Awo didn't have to have been friends with any core northerners before deciding to work for them in 'defeating' the Biafra secession effort. I think in this case, it was more a question of being driven by his emotions and chosing to side with the people he hated or mistrusted the least. As i pointed out earlier, we can now see with the benefit of hindsight how right or wrong his choice was! Besides his political issues with Zik, what other 'excuse' did he have to hate dislike Ndigbo the way he did!? He would have been aware of the pogroms against the Easterners/Ndigbo in the North and hence knew we didn't just wake up one fine morning like that and decide to secede just for the fun of it! Dude, i'm not bragging or trying to sound holy or anything, but knowing my people Ndigbo (and i suspect a lot of Yoruba would secretely accept this), had the shoe been on the other foot and it was the Yoruba that faced what Ndigbo/Eastterners faced in the north in 1966, we would have sided with the Yoruba without them even having to ask, and it would have been curtains for the failed Nigerian experiment! Of course Britain that had just recently handed over the reins of power to the Fulani hegemony wouldn't have liked that, but who cares what they like or don't like!

I notice you say Awo said what he said about pulling the Yoruba out of Nigeria if the East/Igbo are allowed to secede....i notice you claim he made that threat only because 'that's what was agreed on independence'! I see Awo was such a stickler for rules! Pray, was it also agreed on independence that tens of thousands of Nigerians from one region would be targeted for weeks on end for mass murder in another region, with no intervention from the central gov't in Lagos!? Dude, please....we're not kids here!

We only have prior actions and socio-cultural attitudes to values like equity, justice, sanctity of life, education, etc, to determine who between a middle-belt or Biafra led military invasion the Western and Midwestern Regions should have chosen! Like i have asked in the past, on what basis would you assert that the Igbo/Biafra were posed a existential threat to the Yoruba in 1966-70? You'd probably answer back...because a Igbo officer killed Akintola, abi?

The unification decree by Ironsi should have been viewed by those with calm heads as a military thing. It arose from the heirachical and command-and-control nature of the military which called for all commanders to be answerable to a central high command! Only those with preconceived negativity towards the Igbo would have seen it otherwise as they looked for a 'justification' for their later actions! Besides, the unification decree only made the military administrators report to Dodan-Barracks. The fiscal and federal structure of the country like number of regions, percentage of taxes remitted to the centre from the regions, resource ownership, etc, most if not all of that was not touched or altered by the decree. If you have evidence to the contrary, you can help educate us by providing links to corroborate.

Do you have definitive proof of Awo saying in his own words that Gowon released him from Calabar prison? Links to a memoir or autobiography pointing to such a claim being made would be helpful? My own source of information is based on what i gathered from 2nd hand sources...not from Ojukwu and not from Awo. It seems the Gowon gov't issued the pardon and gazetted it, while Ojukwu effected the release! It's clear to any discerning observer what the driving force for Gowon pardoning Awo was....he did it for self interest (ie, interest of the north/Nigerian side) to try and get Awo and Yoruba onside against the Igbo/east! Remember, we're talking of a man who was jailed, for whatever reason, by the northern controlled gov't of Balewa and Sardauna!