₦airaland Forum

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-11-13.html

Apparently ignorance and stupidity has no limits!

TO SPEAK TO A NIGERIAN PRINCE ABOUT YOUR HEALTH CARE, PRESS '1' NOW
November 13, 2013


In a weird confluence of the nation's two most pressing issues -- Obamacare and our insane immigration laws -- this week we found out that the tens of thousands of "navigators" hired by the government to enroll people in Obamacare will include convicted felons.

Despite some "navigators" having already been exposed as having arrest warrants against them, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has no plans to screen out the criminals. (But rest assured: If your identity is stolen as a result of trying to sign up for Obamacare, no one will be more upset about it than President Obama.)

Maybe it's a blessing that the Obamacare website has crashed more often than the Soviet Union's commercial air fleet did.

In addition to convicted felons, navigators are drawn from labor unions, community organizers, former ACORN staffers and front-groups for the Democratic National Committee.

Call right up and give all your private financial and medical information to those guys! What could go wrong? (Before Obamacare was even online, Minnesota's health exchange emailed the Social Security numbers and other identifying information for about 2,400 Americans to a man applying to be a "navigator."

If you call today, you can sign up for Obamacare plus learn about a Nigerian prince in exile who's willing to share his vast inheritance with you in exchange for your bank account numbers.

Which reminds me, federal health insurance programs have long been a prime target for scammers and con artists.

To much fanfare, in 2006 Medicare announced that only 7 percent of its payments were a result of fraud. Two years later, The New York Times reported that it was actually 31.5 percent -- and that Medicare had aggressively hidden the fraud from outside auditors.

Do you think a privately run insurance company would take three years to notice that one-third of its payouts had been obtained by fraud? But with federal programs, there's a powerful incentive not to look for fraud. That would merely vindicate critics of big government!


In 2012, Medicare's crack investigators noticed that more than a billion dollars in home health care payments for 2008 had gone to one single county in Florida -- more than all such payments made to the rest of the entire country.

Do you think it would take five years for a private insurer to figure out it had been scammed out of $1 billion by a few health care professionals in one county? Anyone else would notice being stolen from, but not the government. It's not their money.

Wherever there's a government program, there's a gigantic opportunity for criminals. A staggering percentage of the health care workers scamming Medicare and Medicaid are foreign-born -- much higher than their numbers in the medical profession generally.

Thus, in the Department of Justice's most recent press releases about criminal convictions for Medicare and Medicaid fraud against the taxpayer -- solely for the four-day period ending Nov. 7 -- we have:

-- Nov. 7, 2013
Mehran Javidan, owner of Acure, a home health care company in Oak Park, Mich., was paid more than $2.2 million from Medicare based on fraudulent physical therapy files he submitted between December 2008 and November 2010.

-- Nov. 7, 2013
Javed Rehman, Tausif Rahman and Muhammad Ahmad -- no relation to the Tsarneav brothers -- fraudulently obtained Medicare beneficiary information to bill Medicare for home health services, swindling approximately $13.8 million from Medicare.

-- Nov. 7, 2013
Eliza Lozano Lumbreras, San Juanita Gallegos Lozano, Manuel Anthony Puig and Romelia Puig used their operation of the Mission Clinic and La Hacienda Family Clinic to submit false claims to Medicare and Medicaid, stealing approximately half a million dollars from the taxpayers between 2001 and 2006.

-- Nov. 6, 2013:
Karen Kallen-Zury, Daisy Miller and Christian Coloma were convicted for receiving approximately $40 million from Medicare for patients not eligible for psychiatric treatment because they were not severely mentally ill.

-- Nov. 6, 2013:
Jose Rojo, Antonio Macli, Jorge Macli and Sandra Huarte in Miami paid patient recruiters to refer ineligible Medicare beneficiaries to their clinic for services that were never provided. They were paid more than $11 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare.

-- Nov. 4, 2013:
Godwin Umotong, Leslie Omagbemi, Munda Massaquoi, Comfort Gates, Ovsanna Agopian and Boghos Babadjanian were convicted of fraudulently billing Medicare of millions of dollars for office visits and diagnostic tests that were never performed, more than $1.3 million of which Medicare paid.

-- Nov. 4, 2013:
William Dale Sidener was convicted of submitting fraudulent bills to Medicare and receiving $4,677.00 in payments for services not performed.

These are Eric Holder's press releases, not mine.

Do you notice anything that stands out about the list of convicts? Would any of their names have sounded strange to Ben Franklin? Of 22 people convicted of defrauding American taxpayers by fraudulently billing Medicare or Medicaid, at least 17 have almost comically foreign names.

None of the scammers should be foreigners! We can’t do anything about our native-born crooks, but why are we importing them?

Enormous, unwieldy corrupt government programs run by arrogant bureaucrats would be bad enough in 1950. But after decades of our Third World-only immigration policies, one can't help noticing that Medicare and Medicaid are beckoning Disneylands for foreign-born thieves.

The problem isn't their complexion, it's their culture. In America, we think only dumb people become criminals. That's not true in the Third World!

Nigeria, for example, leads the world in criminal enterprises. Every level of Nigerian society is criminal, with the smart ones running Internet scams, the mid-range ones running car theft rings, and the stupid ones engaging in piracy and kidnapping. At the University of Lagos, you can major in credit card fraud.

There were almost no Nigerians in the United States until the 1970s. Today, there are nearly 250,000 Nigerians in the U.S. (committing the cyber-crime Americans just won't do!). In 2011, we took in more immigrants from Nigeria than from the United Kingdom (9,246 from the U.K. and 9,344 from Nigeria).

Of course, Obamacare never would have passed without decades of massive immigration from the Third World. Liberals didn't change any minds -- they changed the voters. In order to pass Obamacare, Democrats had to bring in the Third World to vote Democratic.

The downside is that the country is now chock-full of people who come from cultures where criminality and government corruption is a way of life -- at the very moment that the country is expanding a government-run health insurance program already shot through with fraud and abuse.

Only confiscatory tax rates can support such a system.

Gosh, I sure hope our new Somali and Nigerian immigrants have German-style rectitude and are very honest about reporting all their income to the government.

COPYRIGHT 2013 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK

I have it on good information he was frustrated out. He had to fall back on his Gates & Duke connections. All the stuff Abati is spouting below is pure rubbish. I weep for this country!

Siga: ...For real...worked 2002 - 2004 ... Pampers line...

Interesting. Was there around the same time. Managed MMO/Warehouse

http://premiumtimesng.com/opinion/123588-the-north-does-not-control-nigerias-oil-blocks-by-toyin-akinosho.html

The North Does Not Control Nigeria’s Oil Blocks, By Toyin Akinosho
Premium Times
Published: March 7,2013

Senator Ita Enang’s spirited claim at the National Assembly Wednesday to the effect that 83% of the country’s oil block is in the hands of northerners appears to be inspired from assertions contained in an old article by a newspaper commentator, Mr. Ross Alabo-George whose famous essay was titled Poverty And Deprivation: Why The North Is Poor.

In the excerpted refutation below, Toyin Akinosho, a petroleum geologist with over two decades of work at Chevron and now publisher of the well-regarded Africa Oil and Gas Report, argues angrily that such lines of thought canvassed by the likes of Senator Ita Solomon Enang and indeed Mr. Ross Alabo-George are merely hysterical, and tendentious, designed to mislead the public. Mr. Akinosho characterizes the arguments as crappy and crummy. It is excerpted from the African Oil+Gas Report for the value it brings to the current debate about Nigerians oil resources and the National Question.

Alabo-George’s article plays up so well the sentiments that a good number of Nigerians, especially middle class types excluded from the spoils of the petroleum subsidy, and allied deliverables, nurse about the kind of leadership we have suffered since independence.

But it has gone around so far and keeps being forwarded so rampantly, largely because it plays to the ethnic schism; the suspicions that each of us harbours, in our different silos, about “the other”.

It’s largely a response to the disingenuous claim by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor, that the Boko Haram insurgency is a response to the 13% derivation allocated to the oil producing states from the federation account. “There is clearly a direct link between the very uneven nature of distribution of resources and the rising level of violence”, Sanusi told The Financial Times of London.

Alabo-George’s piece is compelling when he contrasts what non oil-producing Southern states have been able to do with their supposedly meager allowances with what their Northern counterparts have done with their own allocations.

“Ekiti State has about the same revenue as Yobe and Gombe”, he contends, “but only 17 students passed WAEC and NECO in Gombe state last year, while Ekiti State is known for its high literacy level”.

I find two beautiful quotable quotes in the article: (1) “Borno State has a bigger budget than that of Cross River, a Niger Delta State. While the leaders of Cross River over the last decade have transformed it into the nation’s leading tourist destination, those of Borno have transformed it into a Somalia”.

(2) “Gombe State has a bigger budget than Enugu and Anambra, why has MASSOB not bombed anyone”?

But once Alabo- George ventures beyond the political economic analysis and starts to list who owns what oil and gas assets, his article is a litany of inaccuracies and lies. He gets it totally wrong.

He writes about the estate of the late Mai Deribe, the Bornu State born businessman, supposedly owning a huge oil field; Rilwanu Lukman having controlling shares in Afren; Atiku Abubakar being the stupendously rich beneficiary of the profits of Intels, the logistics company; Aminu Dantata’s Express Petroleum. He ties Amni Petroleum to only Sani Bello.

So much conspiracy theory.

Oil acreage ownership in Nigeria does not have ethnic colouration. What’s more important, sustaining production from oil and gas assets, whether or not awarded by the state, is determined by how much of a businessman you are.

When Jibril Aminu handed out oil prospecting blocks, in the first comprehensive effort “to encourage indigenous participation” in 1991, he gave blocks to companies owned by Folawiyo, Abiola, Adenuga, Udoji, Ibru, Igbinedion,(all Southerners) as much as he gave to enterprises set up by people like Saleh Jumbo and Mai Deribe.

Between 1991 and 1993, we suddenly had over 25 companies, that were Nigerian E&P companies and they took themselves so seriously that they set up an association they christened “Nigerian Association of Indigenous Petroleum Exploration Companies”. But what did these people do with the acreages? They were mostly clueless about how to progress things.

Out of that class of awardees, only Mike Adenuga created what you could really call an E&P company. He is the only one producing oil today, from his own block.

It’s bad enough that Nigerian indigenous private acreage holders don’t produce, as a collective, up to 150,000 Barrels per day, or 7% of the national daily production, so why are we fighting ourselves?

And I am less keen on how much you’re getting as rent from the asset you are holding, than the capacity you are building as manager of a Nigerian oil company who is awarded the asset, in trust for the rest of us.

I am for an ongoing, earnest debate on the National Question. But false information misleads all of us into false conclusions, which reduce the complexity of the solutions we ought to be proffering.

The author cites a number of hydrocarbon acreages belonging to Northern elites, but ignores the fact that holding an acreage is one thing; getting value out of it is another.

That so many people believe the poorly researched article, and so instantly forward it that it becomes one of the most travelled essays on the National Question, is testimony to poor knowledge of how the oil industry works.

The first field the author mentions is Obe field, which, he rightly claims, is held by Cavendish Petroleum, a company set up by Alhaji Mai Deribe. Alabo- George lied by saying that the Obe field, the main hydrocarbon pool in OML 110, contains 500Million barrels of oil reserves.

The Obe field does not have a proven 20 Million barrels. I am not sure it has 10Million barrels. It is not producing as I write. The Obe field has not produced for five years, since 2007, when Tranfigura, the last technical partner engaged by Cavendish, walked out.

I don’t know what discipline Mr Alabo-George belongs to, but this point I am about to make is well known to every junior petroleum geologist with three year experience in the crummiest E&P company: If a field holds 500Million barrels of oil, proven, in shallow water Nigeria, it won’t lie fallow. Investors would rush it.

In countries where you don’t have the complications that the NNPC brings to the table here, fields that haven’t proven much more than 500Million barrels are “rushed” through to development.

Ghana’s Jubilee field didn’t prove a billion barrels before the country’s authorities approved a field development plan. Apart from Nigeria, Angola, Libya, Algeria, Ghana (now, since 2008) and perhaps Equatorial Guinea, no African country has a billion barrels in proven reserves. 500 Million barrels is half of that.

Mr Alabo-George says that Obe has the capacity to produce about 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily from its OBE 4 and OBE 5 wells. What sort of numeracy is this? Or is he dreaming these figures? How can a field with less than twenty million barrels “have the capacity” to produce 120,000 barrels per day?. What’s capacity?

Alabo George’s second example of a wealthy northerner swimming in oil money is Mohammed Indimi, “a Fulani and close friend of General Ibrahim Babangida”. He says “Oriental Energy Resources Limited runs three oil blocks: OML 115, the Okwok field and the Ebok field. OML 115 and Okwok are OML PSC, while Ebok is an OML JV. All of them good yielding offshore oil blocks”.

The author just doesn’t care to verify his claims. True, Indimi’s Oriental Resources holds the three assets. OML 115 is not producing as I write. No one has certified that there’s a producible field in the acreage. Ebok is being produced, on Oriental Resources’ behalf, by Afren, a UK listed company. Last year, the field delivered an average of 8,000Barrels of Oil per Day(BOPD), according to Afren’s website. You can google it. Okwok, as I write, is still in development. Translation: it has produced nary a drop of oil.

Aminu Dantata’s Express Petroleum holds the Oil Mining Lease 108, with technical partners Shebah Petroleum, which bought out Conoco, the original technical partners. Fine.

The Ukpokiti field, the main asset on the acreage, produced for quite a while; and should have made the Dantatas quite rich, over a period of more than seven years. The field died out at some point and is being revived as I write.

“NorthEast Petroleum is owned by another Fulani businessman from the North East, Alhaji Saleh Mohammed Jambo”, Alabo-George testifies. “The license was awarded to him by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida”.

Another truth: North East Petroleum has NEVER produced a single drop of oil since that award in the early 90s. There, simply, hasn’t been a discovery worth the while for operator TOTAL.

I agree that Theophilus Danjuma, also a Northerner, is entitled to contest for the award of the man who made the most fortune, at a sitting, on an oil acreage in Nigeria.

Alabo-George’s article, in his rush to conclusions, even understates the significance, by claiming that Danjuma’s company, South Atlantic Petroleum Limited(SAPETRO), made $1Billion from the deal.

The truth is that China National Overseas Offshore Company(CNOOC ), signed a definitive agreement with SAPETRO to acquire a 45% working interest in OML 130 for $2.268 billion cash.

I don’t know how much the broker of the deal took, but I am yet to confirm if the Nigerian government earned any withholding tax from that transaction. In spite of what he has earned “upfront”, Danjuma’s SAPETRO gets 25,600Barrels of Oil per day for its 15% of OML 130 from the Akpo field, which is delivering 175,000BOPD.

But if you complain about Northerner Danjuma, what about the Alakijas, a Yoruba couple whose company, Famfa Oil, is “entitled”, every day, to 25,000BOPD from Chevron operated Agbami Field, located in deepwater OML 127?.

These two companies are two of the four largest producing Nigerian companies today. The other two are Adenuga’s Conoil(25,000BOPD) and Seplat Petroleum(37,000BOPD, operated, 16,000BOPD, equity).

Only one of those four companies is Northern owned. And it is outright falsehood that “ 80 per cent of crude oil and gas produced by indigenous companies is controlled by the North-East”.

But, as I said again: which technical and managerial capacity are we building on the back of the rent collected from these leases. It’s the real job.

The last example I’d touch, before the concluding commentary, for space purposes, is the case of Rilwan Lukman, who Alabo-Gorge cites as having controlling shares in Afren, the UK listed company. Lukman was there on the ground floor of the construction of Afren, around 2004, no doubt, but the key founders of Afren are Ethelbert Cooper, the Liberian businessman and Osman Shahenshah, who is the current Chief Executive.

What people like Lukman and Egbert Imomoh, the other Nigerian on the company’s board in the founding days, did, is the kind of thing I urge Nigerians in their positions to do.

Use your knowledge to access and create value, not to grab and destroy value. Cooper and Shanenshah knew that Lukman(then out of office both from OPEC and as Nigerian special adviser), and Imomoh(then recently retired as Deputy Managing Director Of Shell Nigeria) knew the Nigerian oil industry deeply and could access oil and gas fields that were lying fallow.

Shanenshah, coming from a financial services background, knew how to raise funds: the most important thing in oilfield exploration and development. Indeed the first piece of news by which most people knew of the existence of Afren was that the IMF had agreed to give a 5Million dollar loan to this company, which was only just about starting. It pays to have Lukman on your board.

Yet, in spite of Lukman’s influence in the Nigerian polity, Afren had never accessed Nigerian acreages via government awards. Afren, cash in hand, running a technically proficient company, approaches Nigerian indigenous owners of assets-like Ndimi’s Oriental Resources, Amni and several marginal field holders, and signs agreements with them to be technical partners.

After Afren has recovered its investment via cost oil, Afren and the company continue to share the proceeds from the field 50:50 for the life of the field. Afren uses Nigerian technical capacity to a large degree and it trains a lot of people. But it can do more.

Afren has never benefitted from bid round or government-sanctioned discretionary awards, so why would anyone link Lukman’s involvement in Afren in a list that has a number of Northerners supposedly benefitting from government largesse? That is part of the trouble I have with Alabo-George’s essay.

I wouldn’t compare Lukman’s relationship with Afren to the benefits that Atiku Abubakar derives from being a part owner of Intels, the logistics company which takes advantage of the free trade zone in Onne, near Port Harcourt.

This particular example helps us to locate “the Nigerian tendency”, beyond “the Northern tendency”, in this discussion. Because, really, we are just all the same.

A foreign company comes to Nigeria to set up for business. Because of the difficulties we invent as barriers to entry, this company requires the services of some big Nigerian men, preferably those who have worked for government, for access.

What Atiku Abubakar has done with Intels has parallels in other sectors of the economy and is comparable with what Yoruba chieftains, Ijaw leaders, Igbo High Chiefs, Idoma overlords, etc, etc, have done with many other companies operating here.

That’s how people became key shareholders of companies like Julius Berger. As I write, the key sentiment underlining the complaints against the tolling on the Lekki Expressway is that “most of the money will go to Tinubu’s pocket”. That’s the word on the street.

Brokerage is not a bad thing on its own, but what we need to stress is a level playing field, rule of law, security of tenor and equity and fairness as much as possible, for all.

If I really want to be mischievous, I’d focus on the recent deal in which Shell and Agip have had to pay in excess of one billion dollars to Dan Etete, a south-south man, for stakes in Oil Prospecting Lease OPL 245. And I would ask “Is that necessarily right”? Should the president, a south-south Ijaw man, have waded in to ask Shell and Agip to move the deal forward? But that’s a story for another day.

In my book, people from everywhere have taken advantage of the unstructured way we have dispensed with oil and gas acreages. Naming names about which Northerner got what size of the pie is less useful than a focus on how government is insisting on open and transparent bidding, but more importantly, on Nigerian technical know how and management.

You can’t hand over an acreage and walk away. You have to monitor what the holder is doing. How he is ensuring employment. If we can’t, with all the treasure, build five private E&P companies that have the internal competencies that Shell has and can go out and buy and operate assets the way that UBA and GTB and Ecobank venture into Ghana and The Gambia, then we have wasted all of the 56 years we have spent since the hoorah at Oloibiri.

Akinosho, a petroleum geologist, former news reporter, and one-time community newspaper editor, is now publisher of the well-regarded African Oil+Gas Report

Reno is being very economical with the truth as usual with that comment on NaijaPundit. Let me quote you the exact part from the book;

Firstly he mentioned the amount in an early chapter when talking about the police in Abuja..

” Early in my ministerial tenure, a memo came to my desk requiring me to approve an eight million naira payment to the police. I asked what this was for and was told it was what the FCT ministry paid the police every month from our N600 million ‘security vote’ for the 2003 fiscal year. I asked to see the commissioner to ascertain why and what he needed the funds for……………………….So one of the first things we did was to approve his eight million naira, bought him 20 cars and many pickups….On the police commissioner’s suggestion, we commenced the design and roll-out of a phased closed circuit TV system that would cover the whole city footprint by 2010. All these were accomplished within 12 months of my reporting for duty in the FCT…”

Later on in the book, he says

“…A report from the FCT Immigration office of an observed influx of ‘North African and Arab’ nationals into Abuja a few months before the All Africa Games……I convened an emergency security meeting to get to the bottom of it. This is an instance where the ‘security vote’ is supposed to be used to facilitate the work of the SSS agents, and also pay off the ‘informants’- commercial sex workers, bartenders, hotel receptionists and the like.’

husu: 2007, when the site was locked because of spammers, some guys moved out of nairaland because of a topic called stock market tips for nigerians. They ran to newnigerians(now dead). Seun quickly opened nairaland and begged them to come back,they refused. Remember stock market tips for nigerians has the largest page on nairaland till date. Up to 800 pages. I miss those guys, wanajo,father of two, windywendy,easimoni,samstone,pumpin77, loma etc.

hello there. Those were the days!

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Thank you

Check this out http://www.futaa.com/

Reference: Is this the Loma I know. Where have you been.

Not sure which Loma you know o. Been busy with school, work, and travel. Now wasting time here instead of working on my dissertation.

If you can think outside the box, you can eat outside of a pot!

Again, I restate that I still think the decision was ill-advised (but then hasn't everyone of GEJ's decisiones been?), and like someone mentioned above, another President is probably going to play more politics with this in the future by reverting the name back to Unilag (with attendant rebranding costs).

Someone mentioned GEJ not consulting Unilag authorities; have you forgotten that he removed the fuel subsidy while still in discussion with stakeholders and without doing due diigence? This is even so in the same week Unilag is mourning its late VC.
The Unilag renaming is only a symptom of a very dysfunctional government that we have, that acts before thinking. I am very afraid for this country.

All that said, I am even more disappointed watching Unilag students on TV unable to articulate their grievances coherently. Is this what we have become? https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6bzMFY1AeIw#at=14

ekt_bear: This misses the point of the Harvard comparison.


What happened by military fiat is not justification for what happens during a democratic regime.

So what is the point of the Harvard comparison? That the brand is so established it cannot be changed? While I understand the sentiments against changing it, I still do not agree with the comparison.

Also, yes, a millitary regime is different from a democratic government, but then you have to show that GEJ broke laws (or failed to follow due process) in changing the name, and take him to court for that, not by 'mauling' innocent citizens..

Note that my write-up is not on whether he should have done it or not ( i am against naming universities after individuals apart from where they are private institutions named after their founders like Harvard is, and i also see it as an act of an unserious government). All I am saying is, apart from the name, what does Unilag stand for? What defines the institution? What is your brand?

http://ynaija.com/2012/05/30/opinion-from-unilag-to-maulag-much-ado-about-a-name-change/

by Idris Bello

The morning of May 29, 2012 found me making the three hour journey from Mbabane, the capital city of Swaziland to Nhlangano, in the southern part of the country. I was again thinking about the great road network I have seen across this small country of a million people, where for over three weeks, I was yet to witness a power outage.

I faintly remembered that the Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan would be making the usual broadcast to list his government’s accomplishments in the last year, but having read Tolu Ogunlesi’s piece the previous day, I was not expecting anything newsworthy. Alas, I was wrong.

A few hours later, I logged on to Twitter, and TwitterNaija was agog with jokes about MauMau , MAUL, MKO Babes and the rest. It took me a while to figure out that in his characteristic way of doing even the right things wrong, GEJ had made an announcement in his anniversary speech changing the name of the University of Lagos (Unilag) to Moshood Abiola University (MAU, MAUL, or MAULAG), in honour of the late Moshood Abiola (MKO), the winner of the June 12, 1993 election.

On the surface, who could have thought anyone could go wrong by immortalizing Abiola after several years of demand by Nigerians (which OBJ, his townsman in his characteristic manner had failed to do). But then, this is GEJ we are talking about, the man who has had his foot in his mouth since the days he was able to afford shoes.

There have been protests in Lagos and in cyber space, especially on Twitter with a free-for-all among various Twitter thugs, voltrons, and vextrons on the appropriateness of the name change.

But what are we really protesting about here?

So the first question here is ‘Does the Federal Government have the power to change the name of the University of Lagos?’

I have seen some laughable tweets comparing GEJ’s act to Obama changing Harvard’s name in a State of the Union Address. But that misses the point. Harvard is a private institution; The University of Lagos is 90% federally funded and exists by Federal charter.

So the Federal Government does have the power to change Unilag’s name. Whether it should have done so is another matter. But this is GEJ we are talking about, our venerable leader who announces a fuel price increase on New Year’s Day.

There is also a precedent in the case of the University of Ife. In May 1987, the Federal Military Government changed the name of the university to honour the highly revered sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Reactions to the name-change were very similar to what is happening now in Unilag’s case.

Quoting Professor Wale Omole, ex-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ife,

“While it could not be controverted that students, staff and people in general admired and loved Chief Awolowo, the university community was depressed that the name of their university was lost. There were student protests, petitions etc., but the Federal Government had already spoken……… There was a general reaction from the community that what belonged to us, that is, the University of Ife, had been taken away, and there was need to be labelled with the old school. Students, staff and even friends of the university fell short of their high level of enthusiasm. The matrix that the situation produced is difficult to describe”.

So pronounced was the impact of that story that universities abroad had to double-confirm the identity of “Ife” grads before admitting them for post graduate programmes. My father, who finished from Ife in 1971, still reminds me to this day that he attended University of Ife, while I attended Obafemi Awolowo University.

However as we have seen in the case of Ife , which has since grown to adopt and revere the OAU acronym (Oba Awon University, Only African University, Omega Alpha University), while also retaining the ‘Great Ife’ sobriquet, the student protests did not cause the government to revert to the old name. Hence, after a few protests and cyber-fights, I think it is now time to move on to more important issues that affect the quality of education in our country.

Quoting Prof. Friday E. Okonofua, former Provost, College of Medical Sciences, University of Benin in a recent paper,

“ Unfortunately, comparative data indicate that whereas Nigerian Universities ranked as some of the world’s best in the 1960s and 1970s, the situation today is the reverse. Today’s Nigerian University is a shadow of its old self, and is epitomized by decaying and obsolete teaching and research facilities, inadequate students and staff accommodation, weak and fragile municipal services, obsolescent library and communication facilities (including low ICT coverage) and a generally inappropriate learning and research environment.

These are the issues we should be discussing. Also, rather than a name change at this time , with the attendant financial implications of rebranding, the Federal Government should have focused on ways to improve the quality of university education and the quality of products emanating from Universities and other tertiary institutions.

In closing, as an alumnus of Great Ife, I cannot resist a parting shot at the new MAULites.

Despite OAU’s name change, it still retains its ‘class’. It is now time for Unilag to show that its ‘swag’ goes beyond its name. But then swag is for boys, while class is for men.

THE 2012 ANZISHA PRIZE TOUR IS COMING TO NIGERIA!

The Anzisha Prize is the premier award for African leaders aged 15-20 who have developed and implemented innovative solutions to challenges facing their communities.

The Prize recognizes young people whose passion for Africa drives them to design and develop projects that transform their communities and the continent. The Anzisha Prize is an initiative of the African Leadership Academy in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.



Want to learn more? Attend an Anzisha Prize Tour information session in Lagos


Date: Thursday March 15th, 2012 (10am and 1pm) or Saturday, March 17, 2012 (11am and 2pm)

Where: Wennovation Hub, Entrepreneurship Development Center, Plot C Obasa Road off Oba-Akran Avenue (behind AP filling station), Ikeja Lagos State.


RSVP
TO RSVP, send your name, age, gender, session preferred, phone number (if any) and email address before March 10.

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Via SMS: 0808 844 4242

Or simply fill the form here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFc5a3RJR19wb1hKY2lVUnF6VmZnWUE6MQ#gid=0

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To help organize an info session in your city, email ideaslab@loftyincltd.biz

@tpia; I am not answering.

Kamali:
@Aloma

Are you in any way related to Musodiq Bello ?

Chairman, na all of my family u sabi? Lets take it offline . My firstname.lastname @ afropreneur.net

Actually, everyone in my family starting from my Dad went to Ife. My dad was in Ife 1967-71. My uncle started working with the university from inception in 1962 in Ibadan and moved with them to Ife finally retiring in 1992. He was close to Hezekiah Oluwasanmi and still tells us great stories about the good old days. Amazing pictures too of the barren alnd and all the initial construction. Because of him, my dad went to Ife, and so did everyone else in the family. Hence I have been visiting Ife since the early 80s. Even as a kid I remember the Wande Abimbola days of ; Ogun o ran, agidi o ran!

Lanre Legacy actually went into agriculture, and had a TV program a while back, not sure what he is doing now.

I could probably write a book on my Ife experiences. I still remember Physics 102 in Amphi. Because it was a huge hall with thousands of students, and the lecturers never used microphones, or powerpoint, there was no way you could see or hear at the back, which was where the NFAs used to sit.

So I used to sit on the podium at the seat of the lecturer along with some other eficos. This particular day in PHY 102, we were being taught by Dr Olowu (I believe) and my mind had drifted away and I was day-dreaming. It took some time before I realised he was pointing to me and asking a question "In which direction will the force go" I had absolutely no idea, so decided to use 'sense' . it will go in the opposite direction sir! Unfortunately he would not take that, so he gave me the chalk and told me to draw the direction of the force on the board. In front of thousands of students, I gambled and missed!!

He then faced me and said all unprintable stuff-" this is how you people come to ife and waste your father's money.etc, Needless to say, that was the last time I ever sat in front in Amphi. and by the way, I did get an A in the course

Kamali:
I only know of Rogers Junior of 1994(if my memory serves me right),he was caught at new buka with some students of UNIBEN and some other universities,a member of the student union exco,Sadiq by name,was also indeicted.When his father heard ,he came down to Awo to plead for his son

@Loma
Are you the junior brother of Sis. Fatimah Bello(Accounting) of blessed memory,if then you must know AbdulHameed Agberemi(of blessed memory too)

Yes, on both counts,

SeunAero:
Thouggh am nt a OAU product,dis celebration reminds me of one Hamed Shittu. He was my tutor at d famous ADAMS COACHING TUTORS in d heart of Oshodi. Learnt he holds a record of d highest cgpa ever,dnt know how true sha.

Hamed was my set. Extremely brilliant, but he does not hold the highest GPA record, not even for our set, or his department. Simeon Adeponle had the best GPA for the 2002 graduating set, and he was in the same class (Chem Engr) with Hamed. Hamed is done with his Msc at Imperial, and works for Chevron in Nigeria.

The usual suspects above me!

My first semester at Ife- April 1997

Entered Ife on April 28, 1997.   Was in H-4 Angola Hall, popularly referred to as 24-Mechanised Division (as a room meant for 9 students was occupied by 24 students/non students). Burkina was in the next room H-5 ( he was 'chucked' and later came back before becoming SUG President)

I learned to eat hot food in Angola as eating was communal. Once you lifted the food off the stove, everyone descended on it with various sizes of spoons; unless you could eat hot, you would starve!

Also, you had no bed-space to yourself, you slept wherever you found space when you came back to the room at night, even if it meant on top of other guys (nothing like 'homo' then)

I still remember folks who would leave the room in the evening ostensibly to read at Ajose, BOOC, Health Sciences,etc but would later be seen to be sleeping by other room mates , yet they would come back the next morning pretending to have studied overnight- Igi Iwe-Eso Odo.

After just a few weeks, we had Aluta in  (protesting school fees increase, which led to attacking Omole's turkey-loaded fridge in his house followed by MOPOL invasion) and were sent home. Then only the Jambites were allowed to resume first, pay the school fees, before other students were allowed back.

Also remember, we were asked to bring our parent to sign guarantees we would not be involved in trouble- there was a galore of 'rented parents' from Lagere or even older-looking students getting paid to be 'parents'

Now if you understand all I have been describing was just 1st semester of my first year, you can understand why some of us can never forget Ife. It was more than a school!

Show me another school in Nigeria where you can have this kind of spirit or emotion across a diversity of students!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_POJbeP69M

My Great Ife Poem-Originally written as a Part 1 Student in 1997

Babbles of disconcerted voices
All attempting to define
A scene beyond description
, An assembly of psychos
All let loose on poor humanity
Each displaying abnormal tendencies
Striving to outdo the other
In acts of incalculable calumny
Awo Hall for you

Fairies come visiting to planet earth
Angelic and cherubic maidens
Dreamy eyed paragons
All residing in Mozambique
And yet some have the guts to say
That the beautiful ones are not yet born
Moz 101 for you

Take a trip to Moremi
And you risk a case of eternal entanglement
For the oldbirds do not want to be left out
In the bid for Mr Right
No play without a promise of marriage
Scratch my back and I scratch yours

The Rwandan child may look healthier than you do
After transversing the great distance
From Angola to Ajose
Only to speed back to Health Sciences
To listen to lecturers that are voiceless
In a marriage of convenience with the board
Bombarding you with innumerable formula
Whose applicability remain a mystery
White House for you!

A citadel of higher learning
Abound with palatial and gigantic structures
The likes of Spider Building and Oduduwa Hall
All reside in Africa's most beautiful campus
A first among equals, even in its heavenly landscape

People with diverse cultures
Aiming to reach the olympian heights of knowledge
Aros and Eficos all combined
To give a hybridized specie

In stress and strain we live
And yet still claim all day long
That Ife is truly great.
Great Ife!

Idris Aloma Bello- July 23, 1997-Room H4, Angola Hall, OAU, Ile-Ife

Great Ife

My alma mata Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria is 50 years today! Here goes our anthem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obafemi_Awolowo_University

Great Ife, Great Ife,
Africa's most beautiful campus.
Forward, vigilant, progressive,
Aluta(struggle) against all oppression.
Forwards ever, backwards never
For learning and culture, sports and struggle.
Great Ife, I love you.
There's only one Great Ife in the universe.
Another Great Ife is a counterfeit.
Great Great Greaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

I got a chance to spend some time with Nick Hughes this afternoon at the Said Business School over lunch.

Organized by the Skoll Centre for social Entrepreneurship, he was here to meet with students to discuss the future of mobile payments.


His bio was impressive.

Nick was most recently the Head of Global Payments at Vodafone, where he started M-PESA, the world’s largest mobile money transfer service (with more than 10 million users in Kenya.)  Nick initiated the M-PESA concept 2004 and grew the business unit into a multi-million euro P&L deploying M-PESA in multiple markets. Earlier, Nick set up an innovation fund within Vodafone to target opportunities in mobile services. Prior to joining Vodafone in 2001, Nick worked at BP, where he headed the climate change program for two years. He holds a PhD In Applied Science, and has an MBA with distinction from London Business School.

Since I had nothing else to do on a Friday afternoon, I decided to listen to him, and it was well worth my time.

In case you have never heard about M-PESA, you can read up here or watch one of their earliest commercials in Kenya.

http://idrisbello.com/2012/01/27/an-afternoon-with-an-m-trepreneur-nick-hughes-founder-m-pesa-mobile-money-platform/

As a graduate of Computer Engineering from OAU (and an OND holder), I strongly advise you take up the Ife admission. No need to waste words on why.

Jarus:
The field will be interesting and defiinitely a hot cake, if not now, in the medium term.
I read, few weeks ago, about the young lady behind 'Flying Doctors' and she is dooing herself good and making name and money for herself. she specializes in an unexploited area of healthcare like this. Going into Healthcare Economics appears similarly promising.

But I strongly doubt, if not totally sure, any Nigerian university does it though.

Interesting, currently one of the areas I am specializing in.

Competition is now open at http://www.dellchallenge.org/

Remember to enter this reference code DSICIB to win cool prizes, like Dell technology and extra mentoring opportunities.

Let me know if you have any questions or run into any issues

Found this conversation very interesting. While SLS tries to make a 'good' economic case for the removal of subsidy, you can see he does not advocate strongly for government's sincerity in implementing the promises.


My e-interview with Mal. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi!
From: Zainab Mahmoud
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 07:57:33 -0500 (EST)
To:
Subject: Greetings and questions, Thank you for reading.

Dear Sir,

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I know you are a very busy man and I hope you will reply even if briefly.

I am Zainab Mahmoud, 23, a doctor working in Ireland.
I stole your email address from email threads from my father (he does not know I am sending this!)

I have read a lot about the current situation in Nigeria re: subsidy, I have listened to your interview on BBC in support of it.
I, like many Nigerians, don't fully understand the economics of this.

My view is I agree that subsidy is not sustainable but what I know is lack of it is simply not 'survivable' for many Nigerians.
I also agree that subsidy should be on production and not consumption.

Correct me if I am wrong, but a lot of this subsidy goes to corruption.
So if we say NO to subsidy removal, it means we are fighting the battle of the corrupt. We continue to fee their pockets!
And if we say YES to subsidy removal and fuel prices double it means we have made the state of the corruption permanent and will continue to feed their pockets, only this time from our empty pockets!

You are respected by a lot, me inclusive, but,
Why isn't your stance stronger about making cuts in other areas like recurrent expenditure?
Why should Nigerians buy fuel at the same price as non-oil producing countries?

I want to make it as short as I can.
It took a lot of courage to email you directly but we don't get the information we need!
Our media is hopeless and our Minister for information even more so.

Thank you again for your time.

Sincerely,

Zainab Mahmoud.



From: Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
To: Zainab Mahmoud
Sent: Fri, Jan 6, 2012 1:47 pm
Subject: Re: Greetings and questions, Thank you for reading.

Zainab hi
Good questions. Actually I have been screaming about government recurrent expenditure and overheads since 2010-as well as the corruption in subsidy regime.

It was my criticism of overheads that led to my wahala with national assembly. And I keep fighting it. However if u look at the 2012 budget the entire recurrent exp of the executive arm is N1.8tr of which N1.6tr is personnel costs. So cutting this means paycuts and retrenchment and this is politically suicidal.

Cab subsidy be phased? Possible and maybe govt will reach that compromise but better to do it once and for all. I have advised a phased approach if that will give a political solution but don't know
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.




From: Zainab Mahmoud
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 14:36:15 -0500 (EST)
To:
Subject: Re: Greetings and questions, Thank you for reading.

Thank you very much for replying! I appreciate it.

Can I please take more of your time and make a few more points?

From what you have explained and the happenings it appears that the Government are not willing to make cuts in their expensive lifestyles but want the masses to take the burden of their mismanagement!
If the Government had suggested a phased approach alongside cuts in their 'overheads' I am sure it would have had a better welcome.

May be the protests need to take a new turn and push for cuts in recurrent expenditure.

If the subsidy is removed completely and petrol is sold at N141, doesn't that mean that Nigerians will continue to fund corruption endlessly because the true price of refining Nigerian oil cant be equal to the price our neighbouring non-oil producing countries buy petrol at.

Why cant we push for better border policies and sanctions on importation of petrol rather than worsen the already dire condition of the average Nigerian?



Can I get your permission to share this explanation with my fellow youths via twitter and facebook?(I will scribble out ur email ofcourse)

Sincerely,
Zainab Mahmoud.



From: Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
To: Zainab Mahmoud
Sent: Fri, Jan 6, 2012 3:00 pm
Subject: Re: Greetings and questions, Thank you for reading.

Well two things; in real (ie inflation adjusted terms) expenditure is coming down. Budget this year is 6pct higher than last year but inflation is at about 11pct.

Secondly I am sure we can get government to chip away at spending but in terms of materiality it will be symbolic. With a budget of about N5tr a N10b or N20b dent in spending makes a political statement but has little impact on such things like deficit/GDP, debt/GDP, debt service/revenue ratios, or reserves, exchange rates and inflation.

Fuel subsidy removal knocks off N1.4 tr which is equivalent 30pct of expenditure in 2011 and more than 100pct of capital budget and a third of total debt. I agree that we need both the symbolic and the material but in terms of macro level analysis items talked about-feeding in the villa or gardening are insignificant relatively speaking, which is not to say they shouldn't be looked at.

On borders in theory smuggling is illegal. In practice if you have money you can bribe officials on both sides and smuggle goods. A government subsidy of N80 for every litre is enough money cross the borders. Saudi arabia is surrounded by countries like bahrain and oman and yemen and kuwait all of which sell cheap fuel so no arbitrage opportunity. Once you have a huge price differential, goods will flow to the higher price market-legally or illegally. We learn this in price theory as a subject called price fixation. Prices below equilibrium always result in rent seeking and black markets or scarcity.
You may
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.




From: Zainab Mahmoud
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 15:09:22 -0500 (EST)
To:
Subject: Re: Greetings and questions, Thank you for reading.

Thanks again!

The economics of it appear complicated and I will be lying if I said I understood all that.

How do you explain this to the average Nigerian who earns the minimum wage of N18000 and because of subsidy removal is now expected to spend N15000 on petrol?
Subsidy is not sustainable but lack of it isn't either!




From: "Sanusi Lamido Sanusi"
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 20:30:02 +0000
To: Zainab Mahmoud
ReplyTo:
Subject: Re: Greetings and questions, Thank you for reading.

The short term impact at the micro level is reduction in disposable income after fuel and transport costs, as well as a fall in real income due to inflation. Painful.
If the fiscal space freed up leads to improved power, infrastructure and productivity then we get growth, jobs and industrial development in the medium to long term.
Success depends on implementation of sound policies and improvement in governance and accountability. What I think is that Nigerians intuitively understand why this has to be done but don't believe government can deliver on the promise so they may end up with pain without gain. I don't blame them as the record of govt has been poor. Its up to govt to prove them wrong.
Sleep well continue tmrw have bad migraine
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

Soon, We Shall All Be Trekking

By Reuben Abati

It must be a joke, right? The proposed plan by the Federal Government to fully deregulate the downstream sector and remove the remaining subsidy on petroleum products. When the news first broke during the week, Nigerians were told that a committee had been set up to be led by the Governor of Bauchi State, Isa Yuguda, with a mandate to work out an action-plan and a time-table for implementation and consult with stakeholders.

The mischief and dishonesty are obvious: why set up a committee to seek the input of stakeholders when a final decision has already been taken? By yesterday, The Saturday Punch newspaper had reported that a pump price of N73 per litre may be announced within a week. The assignment of the Yuguda committee had been completed even before it had a chance to sit. A Petroleum Industry Bill, and another bill seeking to change the Petroleum Producta Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) template have also been sent to the National Assembly. Why not wait for the bills to be considered by the National Assembly?

The so-called complete deregulation of the downstream sector and the removal of subsidy may seem like a purely economic policy decision, but it is so tied to larger Nigerian questions that it ought to be more rigorously debated, and government should make haste slowly. As at this moment, Nigeria operates a partial deregulation regime in the downstream sector. Petrol and kerosene prices are regulated while diesel is fully deregulated. The regime is corruption-ridden, it is badly managed. There is no indication that a complete deregulation regime will be better managed. The problem is not one of form, but leadership.

The arguments being advanced to justify the proposed full deregulation do not make sense. All the arguments have a ring of deja vu. They are taken from the same textbooks that the economists have refused to update, the same ideas that led to the collapse of the global economy. Other countries are making a U-turn and subjecting textbook knowledge to the test of reality, Nigerian policy makers are still holding on to old paradigms. One of these days, we shall start stoning the economists in official corridors.

They tell us that in a fully deregulated downstream sector foreign investors, who have been suspicious of the Nigerian market, will be encouraged by a better pricing regime determined solely and fully by market forces. Marketers in the downstream sector will also be happier as the margins of profit will increase. The Federal Government under the new dispensation wants to privatise the country's four refineries, and it is convinced that investors will jump at the opportunity. To please us, they say as investors make more money, pump prices will reduce and the scope of price differentials will widen, enabling choice. But what is more important, the profit motive of investors and marketers or the interests of the Nigerian people?

Deregulation will not automatically guarantee the happiness of marketers and investors. Who wants to buy Nigeria's run-down refineries, with their obsolete technology anyway? And if anyone does, the profit that they seek will be automatically abbreviated by other challenges in the environment including transportation and the violence in the Niger Delta. I'll like to see those investors who would like to take on the refineries in the Niger Delta at a time when oil mutlinationals are scaling down operations and relocating their expatriate staff due to the menace of kidnapping in the Niger Delta. Besides, the Nigerian investment environment is unstable and uncertain and it is increasingly so. What if another government shows up in the future and introduces a different policy? Full deregulation as proposed translates into only one thing: higher pump prices of petroleum products and greater hardship for the Nigerian people.

It is curious that the recommendation is coming from the Federal Government Committee on the Global Economic Crisis. Elsewhere, recession has resulted in government becoming friendlier towards the people. Countries are introducing packages to stimulate the economy and to inspire hope. Prices are being slashed in order to encourage more spending, government is intervening to play a bigger role in the lives of the people in order to save nations from anomie. These same blind market forces that Mansur Muhtar and co are reinventing as the cure-all for the downstream sector is the devil in the global economic setback. Don't they know this? If PMS now goes up to N73 per litre, with the Naira exchanging as at yesterday at N173 to the dollar, with the stock market now a penny shop, with no regular power supply and no jobs, starvation wages are still being paid, companies are cutting jobs, and public officials are living large and bank directors are junketing about like a yo-yo in expensive jets, and the refineries are down, and there is very low capacity utilisation in the real sector, the only losers will be ordinary people. What should come first: full deregulation or house cleaning? I think the latter.

One major excuse offered by the Minister of Finance is that in the face of huge budget deficits, the Federal Government can no longer sustain an annual subsidy of about N640 billion in the downstream sector. In the past three years, a total of N1. 6 trillion has reportedly been spent. The question to ask is: How? Where is this subsidy that government talks about? How was it disbursed? It is not enough for government to talk about huge subsidy, it must explain what constitutes that subsidy. Now, they argue that if government can have access to this N640 billion per annum, it can then use it on infrastructural development. Well, we have heard that before.

It was the same argument that was used to raise the pump price of petrol from N11 all the way to N70, that was in those days when they used to tell us that a litre of petrol in Nigeria was cheaper than a bottle of Coke, and there has been no improvement in the quality of infrastructure since then. Muhtar says privatisation of the refineries is important and that government is determined to get it right this time. The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mohammed Barkindo says with local refining, cost associated with importation will be eliminated and retail prices will become cheaper. We don't think so. Because even if all the refineries were to work at optimal capacity, Nigeria would still have to import refined petroleum products to satisfy local demand. And can anybody rely on government's promise? The reality is that Nigerians no longer trust their governments.

The Minister of Finance put his finger on the matter when he lamented that the bane of the oil and gas sector is that government has been subsidising inefficiency and corruption. The PPPRA is to be reviewed because under the new arrangement, its role would have to change, but even more so, the Federal Government says, the body has been compromised. Also, the rehabilitation of the refineries, we are told, ended up putting money in private pockets, and so the Federal Government does not intend to spend one extra kobo on those refineries anymore. If the government knows all of these, why is it lamenting? It should immediately arrest those who have encouraged the inefficiency in the PPMC, the NGC, the NNPC, the PPPRA and let Nigerians know who and how the subsidy of N640 billion vanished annually without any impact on the economy and the people. The Obasanjo government once tried to audit the accounts of the NNPC. It couldn't come up with reliable figures. A proper audit of the present, operative template is advisable. Yes, there are leakages, but what exactly is wrong? First, the Federal Government must determine the actual cost of petroleum products, from production to the market. This will enable it to know the exact amount of subsidy that is required, and exactly how much has been frittered away, and by who. Perhaps if it knows the actual required subsidy, and plugs the leakage pipes, it may be persuaded to seek scapegoats elswehere. Second, sanctions must be meted out to the saboteurs when identified. Into whose pockets did the N640 billion disappear every year?

It was further argued that government intends to ensure open and free licensing in the downstream sector in order to break an existing oligopoly. But, if we may ask, who are the members of the cartels that Mansur Muhtar is complaining about? Can they be named? Could they possibly be the same persons who donate money to PDP political campaigns, or Presidential libraries and who are so neck-deep in PDP politics that their names show up every year on the National Honours List for services rendered to (sorry, for damages done to) Nigeria? Independent marketers in the downstream sector complain daily about the dominance of these powerful forces who alone exercise an undeserved monopoly in the sector. Is there any guarantee that government as it is can protect a regime of free competition? With 2011 around the corner, won't the Yar'�dua government still need the cartel in the downstream sector when it decides to raise funds for a second term project?

Again, government wants to do offshore refining. This had been recommended many times in the past, but even if the option is now adopted, has government thought its way through it? Or has this been thrown in merely as a convenient slogan after a fashion? To further simplify this matter: by cancelling subsidy for petroleum products, government wants to free more resources for its own use. I don't want to believe that the Nigerian government is cash-strapped. Is this not the same government that returns unspent money every year to the treasury? And if the lifestyle of government officials and the politicians is any measure of reality, government remains the most profitable business in the country today. If the Federal Government is looking for more funds, why doesn't it look elsewhere and try to cut its own costs and reduce the extravagance of government?. A salary cut for public officals was proposed recently, but one after the other some state Governors are already saying: "Pay cut? Count me out?" Why don't they cut the fat allowances and estacodes then? And strengthen the mechanism for checking corruption in official corridors?

About a month ago, the PPPRA had suddenly announced a surprising reduction in the pump price of petrol, from N70 per litre to N65 per litre. With the present development, it is now clear that government was playing games with the feelings of Nigerians. The reduction was meant to last for one month only. A month later, now the plan to remove "subsidy." The Nigerian Labour Congress has said that it will resist any increase in the pump prices of petroleum products, but it should do more than that. It should provide strong counter-arguments to expose the folly of the proposal and the wrongness of the timing. The National Assembly should be persuaded to act in the interest of the people and say to the Federal Executive: "No, not now".

Other countries of the world provide subsidy for their citizens. Nigerians ask: if they remove petroleum subsidy completely, then what is it that we are expected to enjoy as citizens? Yet, Nigeria is a petroleum producing country. The Global Recession Committee should take another look at its proposal, it should pay close attention to public responses. No matter how attractive the removal of subsidy in the downstream sector may be, this is not the time to do it. And this is not how to go about it. Now again we pay the price for poor leadership. What is being planned is provocative. It is an invitation to chaos.

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11616

WHAT IF you had the tools you need to change the world?

Are you committed to solving social problems? Do you have ideas about how to make the world a better place? If so, enter your ideas in the 2012 Dell Social Innovation Challenge beginning January 3! Regardless of the stage of your idea, you are eligible as long as someone on your team is a university student

As the 2011 Dell Innovation Technology Award Winner and a 2012 Dell Innovation Ambassador, I will be holding your hands through the process.

Check http://idrisbello.com/2012-dell-social-innovation-challenge/ for details.

You can also subscribe for information by sending an email to 2011-dell-social-innovation-competition-dsicib@googlegroups.com or join online at http://groups.google.com/group/2011-dell-social-innovation-competition-dsicib

While I applaud the students for getting to the London round , help me understand this.

They came 34th out of the 35 schools in the London round. How does that translate to 14th in the World?  Also how do you extrapolate performance in a Moot competition to ranking of the Law school?  So next time students from UNAAB win a Fluid Mechanics competition (or come 34th out of 35 schools), they automatically become best Engineering school in Africa and 14th in the world?

Am I missing some part of the story?