₦airaland Forum

We have enough electricity to provide 5 external countries who have constant power supply

This means our electricity price should be low

Yes, you may want to make your contribution, but will the people allow you? It is our society; the society is rotten. We don’t know what is good from what is bad. In the olden days, you dared not be bad, because people would isolate you. When they even looked at you, you would be ashamed of yourself. But now, they will hail you. The situation has turned around; it is abnormal. The evil ones are now the champions that people hail. If you are hard working and you value the truth, you make your mistakes as a human beings, but it will be genuine mistakes. You would not set out to do wicked things knowingly, because you had the power; they would call you a bad person. But the bad ones of those days are the good ones now. People who don’t have conscience are the people in power now, they are those who are close to power and direct our country.

GL:
Actually, Stella was the legitimate wife at her death. He divorced all his other wives when he came out of prison. During her burial, he said he remarried her in the Catholic church months before her death. So I guess Stella was also legal.

It doesn't seem like he had a first lady during his military tenure. Did he?

Polygamy is not a big deal in Nigeria. The most important thing is that the men take care of all the children and their mothers. OBJ is wealthy so I don't think that would have been a problem for him. Most of our big men here are polygamists. I don't think his being a polygamist affects his job as President. Most of our past presidents were polygamists. Abiola was a big one too. Atiku is. It's a Nigerian thing, even paupers want to enjoy the luxury of having several women. They inherited the culture from our ancestors. Majority of us descended from polygamous ancestors.

I can't make out what Mrs. OBJ's problem with Soleye (whoever he is) is. I wonder what OBJ and Iyabo's reactions will be like when they read this.

eveseh:
are u 2c?really are u areally invisible?

diyobdw:
Yeah Seun ,
a change of career is has as easy as a change in the supermart you shop at .You don't need a new life.
So i like to answer with that in mind.
I might choose to change my career to be TV Host,an Actress, event manager or go into clothline business

alheri:
Its a pity the law supports such nonsence. Am a woman and if I decide to get drunk and follow a man to his room that late, then am ready for action! Imagine, it was in the morning she even called the police, whats the guarantee she didnt plan it all along. As long as he didnt force her to drink and later to his room, then she deserved what she got. Am sorry if am sounding rude but why else would a grown up woman get drunk and follow a man to his room if not for some sex? The story is quite vague for now, guess time will reveal the real story.

Really china can really b innocent but if he was really drunk yeah he could've done it but not intentionally.

They had sex, they should forget about it. Afterall, the lady knew she was with him.

@Loverbwouy

What are you pointing at?

In United Kingdom, a visit to Council tell the whole story of people coming to collect Job-seekers allowance.

This is "life" in Nigeria


Is NHIS Good for Our Health?
Simon Kolawole Live, 05.01.2006
http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=46925

One of the most traumatic years of my life was 2005. My three-year-old daughter was very ill. After navigating various hospitals and clinics in Lagos, touring all manner of labs, consulting all kinds of doctors, learning all sorts of medical jargons and burning every note of naira in my account without getting to the root of the problem, we finally landed at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). In addition to the agony of seeing my darling daughter in pains, I discovered that LUTH was also ill. I wept inwardly. The window nets were dirty and torn. The toilets desperately needed water. The elevator was dead. I almost broke down in tears as I saw a man with a bad leg being physically carried upstairs instead of via the lift. All on my mind was the oil money being wasted on things like furniture, convoys and choice property by our politicians.
Eventually, my daughter’s ailment was correctly diagnosed after several weeks of going to and fro, mainly because one specialist was not around and one machine had broken down and all other familiar stories. She needed a surgery, we were told, and the surgery could be done at LUTH. The only problem was that you could not be sure of electricity supply. If NEPA struck, just pray that the generating set would come on. “The other day, a surgeon was performing an operation when the light went off,” a doctor told me. “In the dark, he mistakenly cut himself with the scalpel. But you can still do the operation here, if you don’t mind.” The second problem was water. “You would need to be fetching water upstairs to take care of the patient and yourself—you know, water for bathing, flushing the toilets, washing and things like that. But there’s no problem with that.” The last “no problem” was drugs. “The drugs may not be available in our pharmacy, so you may need to be going out to the chemists to purchase them. But there are many chemists in this area. That should be no problem.”After agonising for several days, we decided to do the surgery at a private hospital. It was going to cost six times more, but I was ready to sell myself to save my daughter’s life. God so kind, the operation, which was done in August last year, was very successful. My daughter bounced back to life in a matter of days, bringing joy and sunshine to my life yet again despite all the months of distress and agony that had engulfed my soul. About the same time, my rent was due. The operation had left me so penniless that my landlord had to mercifully knock N50,000 off my rent in sympathy. At the end of the whole experience, I sat down with my wife and began to ask her questions I knew she couldn’t answer: “How many poor Nigerians can afford to pay N300,000 for an operation like this? How many poor Nigerians die or lose their loved ones because of medical bills? What is the government doing about this problem? If the children of our rulers are ill, they’ll fly them in air ambulance to London or Paris for treatment. But how many Nigerians can afford that? How many poor Nigerians are battling to pay rent and bills at the same time?”
I was pleased to learn, later, that Lagos State has a kind of arrangement that offers virtually free medical services, including operation, to children. I also learnt that in Rivers State, Caesarean Section is free (nobody pre-plans for CS and a lot of women lose their children or their lives while their husbands go cap-in-hand scouting for funds for the operation). However, I still felt there should be a global scheme that will allow Nigerians to receive medical treatment without having to deposit large sums of money.
In the United States, for instance, those who have health insurance receive treatment without hassles. In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is free to citizens, although it is financed with tax payers’ money and it is in serious crisis at the moment as the British government battles to cut costs.

Last year, I was very delighted to learn that President Olusegun Obasanjo had finally decided to give teeth to the seemingly doomed National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). It is an insurance scheme that guarantees medical treatment without down payment, based on regular monthly contributions (10% by the employer and 5% by the employee). Initially, I was very sceptical because I had been hearing of NHIS since I was born and nothing had really come out of it. Several governments had toyed with the idea and turned the idea to a toy. The idea was mooted as far back as 1962 by Dr. Moses Majekodunmi, who was then the Minister of Health. The bill, which he presented to the parliament, was turned down. In 1984, Admiral Patrick Koshoni, then Minister of Health, tried to kick-start it, but the story didn’t change. Same for Dr. Emmanuel Nsan the following year. However, under the IBB government, Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti raised the idea again, and took it before the National Council on Health, which in 1992, finally approved that there should be an NHIS under the health ministry. It turned out to be inchoate. Nothing else happened until 1997 when General Sani Abacha formally launched the scheme and appointed an Executive Secretary. Yet, nothing happened again until 1999 when General Abdulsalami Abubakar signed a Decree to formally establish the agency. It was something like a yo-yo.
However, to President Obasanjo’s credit, he has demonstrated remarkable political will and commitment to the scheme since the re-launch last year. This will surely be one of the greatest legacies he will leave behind when he ends his two-term tenure on May 29, 2007 and bows out gracefully at the Eagle Square, Abuja. His place in history is guaranteed, more so with the considerable success that NHIS is beginning to record since the re-launch. The president’s commitment, combined with his choice of Dr. Mustapha Lecky, a product of the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, as the Executive Secretary, may have provided the much-needed tonic for the mini-revolution in the making.
Dr. Lecky, who reputedly has vast experience in health services financing and health sector reforms, said as much in a recent newspaper interview. He was quoted as saying: “I think we have the highest political support for the scheme… President Obasanjo truly believes in this scheme and he is willing to get it done.” Lecky himself appears to have started on a right footing by holding a stakeholders’ meeting involving the Nigeria Labour Congress and other trade unions, healthcare providers, civil servants and others in preparation for the full-scale take-off of the scheme. Like I have often tried to argue on this page, any project or programme that is supposed to be delivered to the people must also involve the true representatives of the people in the process of planning. That is the surest way of providing for the end users’ inputs and promoting ownership of the programme at the same time. The people must have a sense of belonging for it to succeed.
According to reports, since the scheme commenced service in September last year, the response has been encouraging. Over 700,000 Nigerians have registered so far—which Lecky describes as the “fastest in the history of national social health insurance scheme across the world”. Nearly 95% of federal civil servants have registered. At the end of the current registration exercise covering the police, armed forces and parastatals, the figure is expected to hit three million. The organised private sector is also expected to be fully involved in the programme. NHIS has registered health maintenance organisations (HMO)—the bodies that do the actual work on its behalf. It is the HMOs that handle the payments to healthcare providers and monitor/ensure the quality of service. Under the scheme, there are now about 20 HMOs and 5,000 healthcare providers across the country. As the scheme becomes more known and understood by Nigerians, surely more people will get involved and benefit from it.
I believe the job being done by Dr. Lecky and his NHIS colleagues is highly commendable. In less than a year, Lecky has set up an effective administrative structure for the scheme. The computerisation of registration, ID cards and all the necessary data is spot on, in a hugely analogue country like ours. However, I think there are other grounds that Lecky has to cover. One is the potential clash between pharmacists and doctors on who has what right over what area. Pharmacists and doctors have perfected a way of perennially antagonising each other on several issues and whatever differences they have must be well managed for the health insurance scheme to achieve maximum success. If this would need the president’s intervention, so be it. Two, the quality of service rendered by the healthcare service providers must be subjected to serious scrutiny. Although this is the duty of HMOs, NHIS must enforce the standards. Hospitals that are understaffed and under-equipped should not be allowed to participate in the scheme. This will further enhance the credibility of the scheme and the quality of service delivery.
Finally, is there any provision for those who don’t work in public service and organised private sector? I am referring specifically to the informal sector operators—the bus drivers, tomato sellers and vulcanisers who number millions in Nigeria. These people constitute at least 60% of our economy. I believe, if the law permits, Dr. Lecky and his team can design a specific product for them that will be simple and flexible and allow them to enjoy as much benefits as possible. I paid over N300,000 for my daughter’s operation, and I hate to think that a bus driver will lose his child or wife to a curable ailment—simply because he cannot afford the hospital bills. Yet, this sad scenario occurs in Nigeria everyday.
No doubt, Dr. Lecky, despite the big teething challenges, has lived up to expectations. This is one legacy President Obasanjo cannot afford to underemphasise for the sake of healthy prosperity—and posterity.

Adebayor is not overated.He is simply not rated in the first place

Even his celebrity status is of no help.

I've got a few links where I can get most of these phones, for at least 15% cheaper (Ones made for UK specs and not the mass - produced Chinese "for export to Nigeria only" ones)