₦airaland Forum

The following message was culled from edicolove's post in "The Govt Is wasting Nigeria's Wealth - El-Rufai"

The real problem is the structure of the country itself. The very fact that we are really not one country. Everything starts from there. How can you say GEJ for example should reduce cost of governance when we have a constitution that promotes

1. Federal Character
2. There must be 1 minster from each state. That means there must be 1 ministry to cater for one minster from each state. If you give a man from Yobe 10 naira, you must give another man from Ekiti 10 naira.
3. We are still fighting over oil money in 2011.

This is just to list a few. We really must sit down as a nation to sort out our oneness. If someone, for example, finds himself in the NNPC and he experiences all the northern domination there and he now finds an opportunity to loot, he will be more likely to succumb because he knows he cannot stop others that are doing it and he will feel he is doing himself. But in a country where people see themselves as one, that is less likely to happen. When people have a general sense of belonging, they tend to be less corrupt. Some of you might not agree with me, but the structure of this country is why everything else is fallen apart. There is no continuity in geovernment for example. A new government comes and tries to start his own thing completely abandoning all his predessesor has done. Just because he needs to favour his own people more.

The truth is people like El-Rufai can criticize all they but I don't see them pushing bills in the NASS that can fundamentally change these flaws. I would have expected people like El-Rufai to go to the senate and help make these changes but my problem with people like them is they do nothing but criticize because it is the most convenient thing to do. Imagine if Wole Soyinka was in the senate and pushing stuff? I don't ever like critics because they do nothing. They only criticize. We need men who can take action and push things through. I thought Ngige was going to shake the senate with reformation stuff. But the silence from the guy is deafening. I pray God give us reall leaders that can take the bull by the horn.

I concur that we should have a sovereign National Conference or something of that nature in Nigeria so that there is at least a forum where everyone is represented and can air their grievances.

However, I do not see any benefit that will accrue from splitting the country. Politicians from all parts of the country are equally corrupt, In the west we have had the Ife-Modakeke crisis, we have Jos crisis between members of neighbouring communities, we have the Ijaw/Itsekiri crisis in the Niger delta,

Splitting the country will just exercerbate the ethnic intolerance we currently have.

At a time when the world is trying to come together, I do not believe breaking up Nigeria is a viable solution.

At any rate, non of the countries that were part of the former Yugoslavia are doing terribly well, one of them (kosovo) is even administered by the UN, that's modern colonial rule!

Well, I really don't understand what you mean by "introduce slavery"

Greatly reducing the remuneration of politicians is a very good idea. The problem is how we can effect the reduction in remuneration since politicians are in charge of setting the salaries of other politicians.

I believe one way is to organize continuous rallies at the National Assembly for a start until the total remuneration of senators and members of the house of reps is reduced to at least a quarter of the current value.

One of the major problems youths have in Nigeria is that many of us are too busy trying to make enough money to put food on the table that we cannot afford the time that is needed to organize or participate in protests. God Help Us!!!

Imagine if 90% of the suits we have in Nigeria were designed and sewn in Nigeria,
Imagine the amount of Jobs that will be created in the textile industry,
Imagine the amount of new tailors that will be needed,

Is sewing a suit as complex as will justify a need to import from china?

We don't need to borrow money from any foreign bank to create a brand new textile industry,
All we need are thousands of tailors willing to sew, we have them
hundreds of small entrepreneurs willing to start small-scale textile factories, we have them,
raise the import duty on suits to about 300% of the cost price to create demand for the locally made suits,

What is stopping us? Political will
How can we overcome the hurdle we face? Organizing ourselves into a pressure group!

Imagine the amount of Jobs that will be created if we ban the importation of unnecessary products,
Imagine the ripple effects those jobs will have on the security of the nation,
Imagine the what we can do with the taxes the new employees will pay,
Imagine the effect on our universities if they are saddled with the task of Hi-Tech infrastructure projects,
More research
More univerisity jobs
A sense of purpose for our professors
More focused teaching, our students can see the effect of what they are learning,

These are the things that made America great after world war II, they seem to have collective amnesia brought upon them by relentless lobying from their financial power houses.

These are the things that can make NIGERIA great!!!

We can learn to build our power plants by ourselves. We don't really need foreign investment. All we need is the will to produce.
India, banned importation of cars some years ago and now TATA, an indian automobile company is the producer of LAND ROVER vehicles.

It is global financial institutions that are lying to us that we cannot survive on our own because they will lose trillion dollar profits if we decide to stay on our own.

If we import only less than 1% of our population will enjoy the benefits, the rest will bear the brunt.

The irony of the matter is that the nations that produced the massive financial corporations themselves have become victims of their creation. The nations are neck deep in debt while the financial institutions are paying billion dollar compensation packages to their top managers.
Those nations are so subservient to the financial corporations they created that they preferred to go deeper into debt than to let the corporations suffer.

Let us take back our nation!!!
No more borrowing!!!
Let's start producing!!!

And please, let's read reports from IMF and world bank with a pinch of salt because as I said before, they cannot produce 1 success story and they've been around for decades. Let us use our common sense!!!

The capitalist idea of letting your money work for you is what has put the world into the economic crisis which we are all currently experiencing.
We must return to the era where real value was exchanged in the worlds markets as opposed to the casino like operations we have in the world's biggest markets (the stock markets).

In nigeria, we can start by placing a ban on the importation of unnecessary items so that local manufacturers can produce alternatives.

We do not have to consume something simply because it exists. We can do without most of the things that we consume today without any adverse effect.

Do we really need italian shoes? We can wear Nigerian made shoes
Do we really need to import biscuits? We can eat roasted yam and bean cakes (they are probably healthier)
Do we really need to import toothpicks? We definitely can produce them
Does everyone really need a car? We can decide to use public transport (they are cheaper and more efficient)
Do we really need to import furniture?

there are many other examples,

If GEJ thinks smuggling is a problem then he should tighten border security and place prohibitive import duties from 100 - 300% of the cost of the goods on foreign produced goods and see whether nigerians will not consume locally made products instead.
Opening the ports just makes the economy a dumping ground.

If china will not build a rail system for us because we bar imports from their country then so be it. We can learn how to create a rail system by ourselves and build it from raw materials found in Nigeria.

Indeed, if anyone holds us to ransom for something we cannot build then they can take a hike. There'll be someone willing to take crude oil for the same service, and if there is no one then we can wait 5 more years for a rail system, we have been surviving without a good one for many years.

we must resist the urge to build our society on debt.

We must develop poilicies that allow us to concentrate on the real sector rather than on phantom financial services.

Companies that make most of their profits from activities that produce no real value should be taxed multiple times higher than small businesses that thrive on creating value.

A example of this would be to tax the profits of a stock brokerage firms 2 to 3 times higher than a poultry business because the poutry business produces real value (food) unlike the stock brokerage firm which thrives on the trading of phantom securities that it cannot guarantee.

Imagine if a poultry business sold packets of eggs that it couldn't guarantee to have the same food value you paid for 2 days later when you decide to consume it, We would be outraged, this is what happens in the stock market, yet no one seems to notice because of the desire to get rich quick without making any effort.

With the world on the brink of another economic recession as stated by David Cameron (British Prime Minister), it is evident that the current brand of capitalism has failed woefully.
The problem is that most people are consuming more than what they are producing and financial institutions are profiting terribly from the increase in consumption to the detriment of nations and the people of the world.

We in Nigeria are in a bad situation as the nations we want to borrow money from are themselves too neck deep in debt to listen to us except we present them with deals that they cannot refuse namely economic colonization or annexure which will almost exclusively benefit our lenders and leave little or nothing for us - the borrowers.

This is the time to break up the monopoly of large financial institutions. The bigger a financial institution the more share of the profit it must consume in order to be able to sustain itself.

Nigerians should start using medium sized, state or regional banks as opposed to the national behemoths we have today.

Another benefit of having smaller financial institutions is that the smaller they are, the harder it is for them to influence our politics to the detriment of the common man.

It appears that we are prisoners of a political system controlled by a few powerful interests.

The only way to free ourselves is to organize ourselves, come up with viable solutions that we can implement or solutions that we can force the government to implement.

The start point is to come up with those brilliant suggestions,
There is a topic devoted to that for nairalanders who are tired of complaining and want to start acting.

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-764430.0.html

I believe we should have a positive attitude towards our nation and I'm hoping for the best.

However, the current statistics that are being used to measure economic performance are inflation rate, GDP, et cetera. These rates measure the cost of production in a given economy not the effect of the production.

The irony of the statistics can be found in the following example:
If a foreign corporation invests 10 million dollars into the Nigerian stock market by buying up existing shares, the share price of the company will go up and everyone will say the economy has grown when in reality nothing has happened.
If the price of crude oil in the international market goes up then without any change in the value produced by Nigeria, the economy will be said to have increased. These are all lies that have been popularized by huge corporations who are the primary beneficiaries of globalization.

Unless the REAL sector of the economy shows improvement every other thing is a virtual / phantom especially the financial services sector.

having said that, I believe it is up to us as youths to organize ourselves to solve our economic problems as the government appears not to be able to save us.

Just complaining will not solve our problems.
To post suggestions on how to make Nigeria better please reply to the following topic.
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-764430.0.html

Based on the above premise, I believe youths must organise to stop the government from deregulating the price of petrol and direct the focus of the government to alternative ways of solving the petrol/diesel crisis that we have.

Alternatives include selling the refineries in Nigeria to Nigerians and ensuring that they are run efficiently enough to be able to sustain and even lower the current market price of petrol/diesel in Nigeria.

Do trade by barter with specific corporations to build extra refineries and electic power plants in return for a number of barrels of crude oil.

fixing the electricity problem in Nigeria will cut the demand for petrol by 25 - 50% as a lot of petrol/diesel is used to power generators as an alternative to PHCN

We should come up with an economic theory that solves our problems rather than trying to adapt IMF/World Bank economic recovery theories that have not produced any success story anywhere although they have had up to 30 years to experiment.

The IMF/World Bank economic theories center around globalization as an inevitability and that countries like Nigeria should concentrate on supplying raw materials to the rest of the world e.g. Crude Oil, Agricultural products like cocoa, cotton et cetera while we should depend on countries like Germany for our Heavy equipment, Japan for our cars, India and the US for our software, China for our clothes and small electrical appliances et cetera.

This is exactly what Okonjo Iweala and the GEJ administration are pursuing by trying to deregulate most of the industries.

I believe privatisation has its merits, but when the real rewards of privatisation accrue to foreign banks like Goldman Sacchs and BNP Paribas through the trillion dollar commissions they earn for facilitating global trade to the detriment of communities like the Niger Delta then privatisation loses its appeal and is reduced to a method of extortion.

I believe the boko haram crisis is only symptomatic of a greater societal malaise,
check out the following thread to suggest ways of making nigeria better:
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-764430.0.html

I think Boko Haram is already growing past the "bud" stage.

We need to revamp our police force. Create a new one if possible.

As has been said earlier, we need to infiltrate their ranks and root them out.

The government should never have started with Negotiations, Violence should be met with stiff reprisals.
Only after dealing them a decisive blow should we begin to negotiate with them,

The genius of the education loans idea is that the construction of an additional 50 private universities in Nigeria will employ so much labor, create hundreds of thousands of new and sustainable jobs at the universities. Each university will demand an eco system of hostels, primary and secondary schools, hospitals, hotels, halls, restaurants, housing estates et cetera which will further create more jobs and lead to economic expansion.

Going by the current Jamb statistics an estimated 750000 students will not be able to secure admission to any university regardless of what scores they have because the amount of slots in the available Nigerian Universities are simply not enough.

We may even need more than 50 new private universities,

The government cannot and probably will not create any new University, ASUU is even going on strike because the government cannot meet the demands of the universities it is currently running.

I believe the following idea has the potential to break the current educational dead-lock and create massive a economic boost for Nigeria.

The main tenet of the idea is elucidated below. I will explain the reasons behind them after.

The government should guarantee loans by small micro-finance banks to prospective university students to study in Private Nigerian Universities

1. The loans should be given by Micro-Finance Banks because they are not big enough to easily circumvent the process for some higher order financial gimmick to make more money and further enslave Nigerians.
2. The money should not be given free of charge by the government because the government cannot afford it, Many states cannot even pay the Minimum wage
3. The loans should be for tuition at private universities because we want a private sector led explosion in education investment that can only be made if there is adequate demand.
4. The loans will mirror current student loans in the UK and the US

1. Reverse GEJs policy of opening the ports to the goods that were banned during the OBJ era and institute a BUY NIGERIAN policy to encourage local businesses.

2. STOP the importation of non-essential services and create a process for the understudy of specialist services that cannot be provided by Nigerians with a view to transferring the knowledge needed within the shortest time possible.
The software industry is ripe for the implementation of a policy of this nature. Organizations must prove beyond all doubt that the Nigerian software industry cannot provide the kind of software they need before they can be allowed to use software developed oversees.
Implementing this alone has the potential of creating thousands of new jobs for software developers and the various ancilliary services that will be needed to maintain their various local organizations.

It's very easy to condemn the Government [and rightly so]. It's very easy to see what is wrong.
The generation before us has failed cataclysmically.
The present government cannot save us!
We must save ourselves!
The only way to save ourselves is by organizing ourselves through various media.

This thread is for all of us to put forward various suggestions as to how we can save ourselves in spite of our government and to engage in meaningful debate on the various suggestions put forward.

Remember, it is easy to criticise someone else's suggestions therefore let us make sure that our criticisms carry in themselves the some kind of solution to the problem identified in the suggestions being critiqued.

Nice forum.

It would be nice to discuss about the things that we (mothers) need the most that our children's creches, and primary schools do not provide.

For example, how can we get affordable ways to make our children learn stuff like swimming and other extra curricular activities especially in Nigeria.
How can we get help on organizing fun activities for our children

BUHARI'S CLOSING STATEMENT
Fellow Nigerians, you need a leadership that you can trust, that will lead this country for the next 4 years.
We know the situation we are in now, you know the situation we are headin to if we follow the advise
President Obama said when he visited Ghana. He said that developing countries need strong institutions
rather than strong personalities.
In Nigeria we need both, we need strong people to resuscitate the institutions and make them strong
APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE
Thank you very much,
(MODERATOR: General Buhari you have got a min left do you want to use it.
BUHARI(contd)
What I am saying is that this multi party democracy has given Nigerians the power to choose their
leadership and change them at will. So it is up to them to have the courage to choose people
and ensure that their votes count.
When we say people should go and register, which we hope they have, they should go and vote.
And make sure that their votes count. Then they give the opportunity for whatever leadership
they have chosen to perform or not to perform,

I didn't watch the debate but if this is Buhari's closing remark then he clearly knows the basic thing Nigeria needs, Strong institutions.

Ideas are great and Bakare has great ideas, I think bakare will trump Shekarau any day when it comes to ideas, so if it is about the leadership team then Buhari + Bakare is the clear winner, Bakare with the great ideas, Buhari with the fundamental idea and the integrity and will power to deliver.


For everyone who thinks Buhari does not have what it takes in intellectual capacity to rule Nigeria my response is yes Buhari alone does not have what it takes in terms of intellectual capacity but he has demonstrated (in choosing Bakare as his vice) that even though he doesn't have the brains, he can get the brains to do the job.

Leadership is not just about having intellectual capacity, It is about delivering results through other people.

Please Vote Buhari + Bakare, Vote for Change!!! Nigeria needs you!!!

thehomer:
The God I refer to depends on the type presented. e.g I cannot say I do not believe in the existence of the Pantheist God.

So you are really not an atheist, you just don't believe in Christianity or monotheism in general.

@toba

Now lets shift our attention to giving. unlike tithing, it has no limit. Is it also a condition to receiving blessings?

Giving may not  always be a prerequisite for every kind of blessing.

Usually, blessings are the result of a relationship or covenant.
For example, a father will bless his son not because the son has done something for him but just because there is a relationship between them.

The bible says ", Give and it shall be given unto you, " It means that if one gives then the person will receive not that a person can only receive if he or she gives. The fact that the statement works one way does not mean it works the other way.

In other words, giving is a sufficient but not always a necessary condition for receiving.

@ritchboy

Do you believe that there must have been a creator or cause for this universe?

@thehomer

You do realize that there are monotheistic religions available. If the God of this monotheist does not exist, then for such a person, God does not exist. But, due to the numerous definitions of God available, this can be quite problematic.

Ok so your belief that God does not exist really means that you do not believe in the existence of God as Christians believe not that you do not believe in the existence of any God right.

Except i never said God does not exist. . . Having read through the thread YOU seem to be the only one making categorical statements, with nothing tangible to back them up.

Sorry, my mistake.

OK, so you believe God exists or at least God can exist.

There is one important thing that you are missing here and need to know. Just because an entity is living in another dimension does not mean that it is not physical like us. It is just another physical being living in another dimension which is just as physical as our own. Maybe with different physical laws, yes, but still physical, anyway. Physical bodies will be needed to live in any dimension. They may be different in properties and characteristics, but still physical bodies nonetheless. It is only through our thinking that we believe entities living in another dimension have to be ethereal, but i don't believe they are. In their own world, definitely not.

We don't just assume God is non-physical because He is in another dimension. We believe He is non-physical because if He were physical He would have to have been created by something or someone else. Since we are talking about the being at the beginning of the chain, that being has to be non-physical.

How one comes to the conclusion atheism is illogical beats me

Why we came to the conclusion that atheism is illogical is because it does not satisfactorily explain the fundamental issues of life.
How can atheism explain the creation of the universe without assuming that physical matter somehow spontaneously materialized from nothing (Which is impossible) ?

On the other hand, when there is a lack of tangible knowledge/evidence, then the logical conclusion is not to believe, be it in God, Santa Claus or Bigfoot

Except of course when you still cannot explain an important phenomena (as important as the cause of the universe) without belief.

Electricity cannot be observed with the eyes but there is evidence as to it's existence.

We are the evidence of a creator, therefore belief in a creator is logical.

Many atheists believe in a creator. They just don't believe that the creator is God.

If you consider that no physical phenomena can materialize out of nothing then you have to agree that the cause / creator of the universe is non - physical.

If you consider that intelligibility and communication has never been observed to manifest in non - intelligent beings and life has never been observed to spontaneously materialize out of non-biological physical matter then you are left with the option that the creator must have been intelligent.

Theists call this intelligent creator God.

You said one requires "ABSOLUTE knowledge" to logically be an atheist(belief in non-existence of God). If a man is married to a woman, then it is logical to believe they've had sex based on the absolute FINITE knowledge of their marriage.

However if you were to say there is no married man who has never had sex then you would have to have knowledge of all the married men in the world to defend your statement.

To prove that black swans exist, one only has to have seen one black swan; but to say black swans do not exist, one has to have seen all the swans in existence

In the same vein for one to say there is no God one has to know all the beings there are in the universe to know that God is not one of them.

To defend a statement of non-existence one has to possess absolute knowledge.

"My brand of atheism"?

Yes your brand (that only believes in the non-existence of gods without the burden of proof because it's just a belief not known fact!)

The disbelief in the existence of God(s) is a BELIEF in the non-existence of God(s). . . mere wordplay

I am talking about belief in something concrete not a mere rephrasal of words.
A coherent worldview has to tell us who we are and at least attempt an explanation of why we are the way we are.

So my friend, a simple belief in the non-existence of gods does not suffice.