usba:
I simply don't believe one word of this article.

Ties to Boko Haram?
It is possible that some of those participating in the attacks on farming communities in Nigeria are former members of Boko Haram who trade in violence, but coordination with the group itself is unlikely. Boko Haram is dominated by Kanuri rather than Fulani, and the rights of cattle-herders have not figured prominently in the group’s Islamist agenda.

There are other differences from Nigeria’s Boko Haram rebellion:

Though many Boko Haram members are ethnic Kanuri, the Boko Haram insurrection never took on an ethnic character, and the movement’s leadership has never claimed one.

Boko Haram’s identity and aims center on religion. The Fulani herders’ main concern is with access to grazing land, although they are susceptible to religious agitation.

Boko Haram’s enemy (despite leader Abu Musab al-Barnawi’s recent calls for attacks on Christians) has always been the state. Armed Fulani groups generally avoid confrontations with the state.

Like most insurgent movements, Boko Haram has a central leadership that is generally identifiable despite the movement’s best efforts to keep details murky. There is no guiding individual or committee behind the violence associated with the Fulani herders.

Conclusion
In highly militarized northern Mali, Fulani gunmen have begun to form organized terrorist or ‘self-defense’ organizations along established local patterns. If this became common elsewhere, it would remove community decision-making from locally based “cattle associations” and hand it to less representative militant groups with agendas that do not necessarily address the concerns of the larger community. In this case, the Fulani crisis could become intractable, with escalating consequences for West Africa.

In Nigeria, the state is not absent, as in northern and central Mali, but it is unresponsive. A common thread through all the attacks alleged to be the work of Fulani herdsmen, rustlers, or vigilante groups is the condemnation of state inaction by victims in the face of violence. This unresponsiveness breeds suspicion of collusion and hidden motives, weakening the state’s already diminished authority, particularly as even elected officials urge communities to take up arms in self-defense.

There continues to be room for negotiated solutions, but attempts to radicalize Muslim herders will quickly narrow the room for new options. Transforming an economic dispute into a religious or ethnic war has the potential of destroying the social structure and future prosperity of any nation where this scenario takes hold. For Islamist militants, the Fulani represent an enormous potential pool of armed, highly mobile fighters with intimate knowledge of local terrain and routes. In Nigeria, a nation whose unity and physical integrity is already facing severe challenges from northern jihadis and southern separatists, mutual distrust inspired by communal conflict has the potential to contribute to the outbreak of another civil war in Nigeria between northern Muslims and southern Christians and Animists.

Is the violence really due to “foreign terrorists,” “Boko Haram operatives,” and local gangsters posing as Fulani herdsmen? All are possible, to a degree, but none of these theories is supported by evidence at this point, and any combination of these is unlikely to be completely responsible for the onslaught of violence experienced in the Sahel. What is certain is that previously cooperative groups are now clashing despite the danger this poses to both farmers and herdsmen. The struggle for land and water has already degenerated into ethnic conflict in some places and is increasingly seen, dangerously, in religious terms by elements of Christian Nigeria. There is a real danger that this conflict could be hijacked by Islamist extremists dwelling on “Fulani persecution” while promoting salafi-jihadism as a radical solution.

The Fulani, an estimated 25 million people, range across 21 African countries from Mauritania’s Atlantic coast to the Red Sea coast in Sudan, though their greatest concentration is found in West Africa’s Sahel region.b The Fulani speak a common language (known as Fulfulde or Pulaar) but, due to their wide geographical range, are known by several other names in their host communities, including Fulbe, Fula, Peul, Peulh, and Fellata. Virtually all are Muslim. Roughly a third of the Fulani continue to follow a traditional semi-nomadic, cattle-rearing lifestyle that increasingly brings them into conflict with settled agriculturalists at a time of increased pressure on resources such as pastureland and water. They are typically armed to protect their herds from rustlers, wild animals, and other threats, and in recent years, the ubiquitous AK-47 has replaced the more common machete as the weapon of choice.

The Fulani began building states in the 18th century by mounting jihads against non-Islamic rulers in existing states in the Guinea-Senegal region. A Fulani Islamic scholar, ‘Uthman Dan Fodio, recruited Fulani nomads into a jihad that overthrew the Muslim Hausa Amirs of the Sahel and attacked the non-Muslim tribes of the region in the first decade of the 19th century, forming a new kingdom in the process—the Sokoto Caliphate. Following Dan Fodio’s Islamic revolution, a whole series of new Islamic Emirates emerged in the Sahel under the Sokoto Caliphate, which fell to the British in 1903. There are accusations within Nigeria’s legislatures that the current Fulani-associated violence is simply the continuation of Dan Fodio’s jihad, an attempt to complete the Islamization of Nigeria’s middle belt and eventually its oil-rich south.

Nomadic patterns and a significant degree of cultural variation due to their broad range in Africa have worked against the development of any central leadership among the Fulani. Traditional Fulani regard any occupation other than herding as socially inferior, though millions now pursue a wide range of occupations in West Africa’s urban centers.

Nigeria’s Military Option
In late October 2016, Nigerian Defense Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar declared Boko Haram “100% defeated” and announced the launch of “Operation Accord,” a military campaign to “take care of the nuisance of the Fulani herdsmen once and for all.” Unfortunately, no mention was made of what kind of tactics would be employed to prevent ethnic nationalism and religious radicalism from further taking hold in the Fulani community.

A common complaint from victims of Fulani violence is that help from security services rarely materializes despite their assurances that security is a top priority. This has led to the formation of anti-Fulani vigilante groups (some inspired by Borno State’s anti-Boko Haram “Civilian JTF”) that have few means and little inclination to sort out “bad” herders from “good.” Existing vigilante groups tend to have poor coordination with police services, perhaps deliberately in some cases due to suspicion that the security services sympathize with the herdsmen. Earlier this year, the United Nations stated advance warnings of the April 2016 attack in Enugu State that killed 40 people had been ignored and noted that perpetrators of earlier attacks appeared to enjoy “complete immunity,” which encouraged threatened communities to “take justice into their own hands.”

In Zamfara State, rural communities have complained of Fulani herdsmen committing murder, gang-rapes, destruction of property, and massive thefts of livestock while security services do nothing. Reprisals are now organized by a Hausa vigilante group named Yan Sakai. Though banned by the government, Yan Sakai continues to operate, escalating the violence through illegal arrests and summary executions.

Delta State’s former commissioner of police Ikechukwu Aduba expressed exasperation with the growing crisis: “The problem is how do we contain [the herdsmen], especially with their peculiar mode of operation? The way these people operate is amazing. They will strike within five and six minutes and disappear… there is no way the police can be everywhere at the same time.” Difficult terrain and poor communications complicate the matter, but the continued inability of the state to provide a reasonable degree of security damages public trust in authority and encourages an armed response in previously peaceful communities.

One claim that has gained traction among leaders of the Igbo (a large ethnic group with an estimated population of 30 million people in southern Nigeria) is that the country’s president, Muhammadu Buhari (a Fulani), is pursuing the Islamization of Nigeria by allowing Fulani herdsmen to murder Christians. These claims were rejected on October 10, 2016, by the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, a Fulani and one of Nigeria’s leading Islamic authorities: “The problem with herdsmen and farmers is purely about economy. The herdsman wants food for his cattle; the farmer wants his farm produce to feed his family.” There have been calls for the sultan to make a personal intervention, appealing to the Fulani’s respect for “true leaders and their traditional institutions.” The sultan, however, like the cattle associations representing the herders, claims that those involved in the violence are “foreign terrorists … the Nigerian herdsmen are very peace-loving and law-abiding.”

Nigeria: Economic Struggle or Religious Conquest?
In early 2016, the streets of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, began filling with Fulani herders and their livestock, snarling traffic and prompting fights between herders and beleaguered motorists. A ban on grazing in the federal capital had been widely ignored, and in October 2016, authorities began arresting herders and impounding their livestock. The local government has obtained over 33,000 hectares of land as an alternative to grazing in the streets of the capital.

The Nigerian capital, however, has yet to experience the herdsmen-related violence that continues to afflict the following regions:

Northwest (primarily Muslim): Kaduna and Zamfara States

Middle Belt (ethnically heterogeneous and religiously mixed): Nasarawa, Taraba, Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, and Niger States

South (primarily Christian and Animist): Ebonyi, Abia, Edo, Delta, and Enugu States

At times, Fulani gunmen have shown no fear of attacking senior officials. On his way to visit a displaced persons’ camp in April 2014, former Benue governor Gabriel Suswam’s convoy was ambushed by suspected Fulani herders who engaged the governor’s security detail in a one-hour gun-battle. Afterwards, Suswam told the IDPs:

“This is beyond the herdsmen; this is real war … so, if the security agents, especially the military, cannot provide security for us, we will defend ourselves … these Fulani are not like the real Fulani we used to know. Please return to your homes and defend your land; do not allow anybody to make you slaves in your homeland.”

The Ekiti State’s Yoruba governor, Ayodele Fayose, has implemented laws designed to control the movements of the Fulani herdsmen, much to their displeasure. A statement from the Mayetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN, a national group representing the interests of Fulani herders) suggesting that the new laws could “develop into [an] unquenchable inferno … capable of creating uncontrollable scenarios” was interpreted by local Yoruba as “a terror threat.” The governor described the federal government’s failure to arrest those responsible for the MACBAN statement as proof of a plot “to provide tacit support” to the herdsmen. With clashes threatening to deteriorate into ethnic warfare, Fayose called on Ekiti citizens to defend their land against “these Philistines” whose character is marked by “extremism, violence, bloodshed, and destruction.”

Some senior Christian clergy have alleged the influx of Muslim herders is a scheme by hard-pressed Boko Haram leaders “to deliberately populate areas with Muslims and, by the sheer weight of superior numbers, influence political decision-making.” After herders killed 20 people and burned the community of Gogogodo (Kaduna State) on October 15, 2016, a local pastor described the incident in religious terms. “This is a jihad. It is an Islamic holy war against Christians in the southern part of Kaduna state.” Another said that like Boko Haram, the Fulani had a clear agenda “to wipe out the Christian presence and take over the land.” As many as 14 Fulani were hacked to death in retaliatory attacks.

In late February 2016, alleged herders reportedly massacred over 300 Idoma Christians in Agatu (Benue State). A retaliatory attack on a Fulani camp across the border in Nasarawa State on April 30 killed 20 herdsmen and 83 cows. After the killings, Nigeria’s senate moved a motion suggesting attacks attributed to Fulani herdsmen were actually “a change in tactics” by Boko Haram. This view was roundly rejected by Benue State representatives in the House of Representatives, who castigated the president for his silence on the attacks. According to the leader of the Benue caucus, the incidents were an “unfolding genocide in Benue State by Fulani herdsmen, a genocide that, typical of the Nigerian state, has been downplayed or ignored until it spirals out of control.”

However, it is not only Nigeria’s farming communities that complain of “genocide.” For Nigeria’s Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), attacks on “innocent Fulani” by vigilantes, rustlers, and security forces constitute an effort to eliminate Islam in Nigeria:

“The Nigerian Muslim community as a stakeholder in nation-building is also aware of the symbiotic relationship between the Fulani and the religion of Islam and, by extension, the Muslim Ummah of Nigeria. Any hostile act against the Fulani is therefore an indirect attack on Muslims. Genocide aimed at the Fulani is indubitably mass killing of Muslims. It is war against Islam.”

There were further attacks in Benue allegedly by Fulani herdsmen in late April 2016. A local Fulani ardo (community leader), Boderi Adamu, said that the attackers were not Fulani—he “heard people say they were foreigners”—but insisted that the Nigerian constitution provided free movement for all citizens within its borders, “so they cannot continue to stop us from finding pastures for our cows.” However, as one Nigerian commentator observed, while “the constitution grants free movement to all its citizens, it does not grant free movement to hordes of animals with those citizens … cows cannot overrun a whole country. It is unacceptable.” Despite a January 6, 2017, agreement between Fulani herdsmen and the majority Christian Agatu community in Benue State, violence erupted again on January 24 with 13 villagers and two herdsmen killed during an attack by Fulani herders.

GideonIdaboh:
Chai. Pls they should wait till after the end of Buhari's tenure (1st June, 2019). Otherwise, it will be used to fund electioneering campaigns

trillville:
The two most interesting parts to me in the article
1.

Imagine two people.....

2.

In Africa, countries such as Nigeria have converted resources into consumption booms, but have largely failed to build the infrastructure or invest in the healthy, educated population that will sustain future growth.

Much of Africa, ....

Nwodosis:
Is President Trump aware?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to pay off the $76 million debt that Nigeria owes Japan for resources used to eradicate polio.

It marks yet another investment by the Gates Foundation in the fight against the ancient disease. In 2017, the Gates Foundation reported it had so far spent a total of $3 billion on anti-polio efforts.

“You might be wondering why we're spending so much money when there's only 12 cases,” said Jay Wenger, a medical doctor who leads the Gates Foundation's polio eradication effort, to CNBC. “We want to be sure we finish it off.”

In the foundation’s 2017 annual letter, Bill Gates was optimistic that the end of polio was near, adding:

“...ending polio will save lives—through the magic of zero. When polio is eradicated, the world can dedicate polio funds to improving child health, and the lessons from polio will lead to better immunization systems for other diseases.”



According to Quartz Africa, the Gates Foundation had agreed in 2014 to pay off Nigeria’s debt over a 20-year period if the country could achieve “more than 80% vaccination coverage in at least one round each year in very high risk areas across 80% of the country’s local government areas.”

The efforts seem to have paid off. Nigeria, which accounted for more than half of all polio cases in 2012, reported zero new cases of the infectious disease in 2017. But achieving widespread immunization in the African nation has been difficult.

One major factor that has contributed to the lingering of polio in Nigeria has been cultural opposition to immunization. This sentiment can, in part, be traced back to 2003 when a physician on a Nigerian government committee said Western medicine was “corrupted and tainted by evildoers from America and their Western allies.”

[img]http://www.theatlas.com/charts/HyFKTuYVM[/img]
Source: The Atlas

Shehu Sani, an activist and president of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, told The Guardian:

“Polio vaccinations have been controversial. There are religious clerics who believe the specious argument that [the vaccination program] is an attempt to reduce the number of Muslims in northern Nigeria through sterilization. There is a constituency of opinion that has been disseminated to the general population.”

The most violent opposition to the vaccination effort occured in 2013 when a group of gunmen reportedly tied to the militant group Boko Haram shot dead nine women who were administering polio vaccines in the northern city of Kano. Several years later, in 2016, two children in Nigeria contracted polio just before the mark of a two-year streak of zero cases. Members of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative said Boko Haram's refusal to allow medical professionals to administer vaccinations in north Nigeria likely played a role in the outbreak.


Anti-polio movement in the U.S.
The U.S. has been polio-free for nearly four decades, but in the 1950s it paralyzed thousands of American children every year. Although polio is essentially harmless to most people, it’s one of the few infectious diseases that can cripple an otherwise healthy child overnight. It’s the quick-acting nature of the disease, as well as the the visible toll it took on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that helped it become one of the most feared infectious diseases of the 20th century.

“People tried to keep their children safe from the potentially paralyzing disease by keeping them out of public places such as pools, parks, and theaters,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But in 1952, thanks in part to the donations of millions of Americans, a medical researcher named Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine developed the world’s first effective polio vaccine, and by 1979, the disease became completely eradicated in the U.S. Parents worldwide are now advised to have their children administered polio vaccines several times throughout childhood. This has led to the eradication of the disease in almost every country in the world except Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Why polio will be eradicated
There’s good reason to believe polio will soon be gone for good.

Unlike many other infectious diseases, polio depends on human hosts for its survival—it can’t live in animals, nor can it survive outside the human body for long periods of time. So what would likely eradicate polio in its three remaining host countries, and therefore the world, would be achieving herd immunity—a robust level of resistance to a disease that occurs when a sufficient amount of a population is immunized. For polio, the herd immunity rate is estimated to be around 80 percent.

In other words, the polio virus will die off forever when it runs out of unvaccinated hosts to infect. The Gates Foundation seems confident this is a goal that can be achieved in the near future—and it's putting its money behind it.

Imagine two people. Let’s call them Bill and Ben. Bill is a midranking investment banker who clears 500,000 pounds ($680,000) a year after tax. Ben is a gardener who takes home 25,000 pounds ($34,000). Who is better off?

If we judge them by income, then Bill is clearly richer; 20 times richer, to be precise. But who is wealthier? For that, you’re going to have to know more about their stock of assets and broader circumstances.

In national accounting terms, Bill’s 500,000-pound salary is the equivalent of gross domestic product. It is the “flow” of income earned in a year. But, as any mortgage lender knows, that doesn’t tell you anything about his wealth or his salary next year or the year after that.

Did I mention that Bill is up to his neck in debt after a crippling divorce, or that he has an expensive cocaine habit? He’s sold off most of his assets, including his vintage Harley-Davidsons. All he is left with is a costly mortgage and several payments on his (scratched-up) Porsche. At 59, he’s also washed up at work. In fact, he is about to be fired when the bank shifts its derivatives trading team from London to Frankfurt.

Ben, meanwhile, lives in the 100-million-pound country estate he inherited from his great-aunt. On the weekends, he potters about for fun in his own Versailles-inspired garden, paying himself a nominal salary.

This year, before he turns 21, he plans to sell the estate and move into a modest flat in Knightsbridge. He’ll invest the 95 million pounds he has left over and live off the interest while he completes his studies as a patent lawyer, a profession that should earn him a bit of pocket money in the years ahead.

Now who looks richer? Bill the banker or Ben the gardener?
Michal Kalecki, the Polish economist, is said to have described economics as “the science of confusing stocks with flows.” Investors scrutinize a company’s balance sheet as well as its profits and losses. Yet, when it comes to sizing up a nation, we are mostly stuck with GDP, which counts the value of goods and services produced in a given period.

GDP numbers can be misleading. That applies especially to resource-rich countries. Saudi Arabia’s income per capita of around $20,000 a year depends on the price and production volume of oil, which will one day run out. At that point, unless the Saudis figure out a way of replacing lost income — through developing high-tech industries staffed by educated people — it will become the Bill the banker of nations.

As Paul Collier, professor of economics and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, says, it is a lesson hard to glean from national income statistics. You need regular updates of a country’s balance sheet to “blow the whistle” on unsustainable policies.

Yet it is not something lost on astute leaders. Much of the urgency behind the reform efforts of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi’s 32-year-old crown prince, stems from an apparent determination to diversify the economy before it is too late.

“Policies that create wealth go beyond increasing output,” say Kirk Hamilton and Cameron Hepburn, in their recent book National Wealth: What Is Missing, Why It Matters. “They involve investments today for returns in the future.”


I have long had vague misgivings about GDP as an accurate barometer of living standards and the sustainability of wealth. As a young reporter for the Financial Times in Latin America in the 1990s, I quickly learned to report minutely on the quarterly gyrations of GDP and to lend my articles a touch of gravitas by deploying GDP as a denominator. Tax revenue or debt levels or education expenditure were best expressed as a percentage of GDP to facilitate cross-country comparisons. Yet beyond knowing that GDP was a measure of economic output, I never stopped to think exactly how it was calculated or precisely what it meant.

Later, as a correspondent in Japan, I wondered why people seemed so well-off when nominal GDP had not budged for 20 years. Deflation and low population growth were part of the answer. That meant real per capita income was higher than the nominal number suggested. But the quality of services and technology also made a difference to living standards. To GDP, an elegant Mitsukoshi department store was the same as a Walmart, and a clapped-out British commuter train did just as well as a Japanese Shinkansen traveling at 200 mph and arriving with a punctuality measured in fractions of a second.

Later still, in China, I marveled at year after year of double-digit growth, but worried that no one was taking any statistical reckoning of the not-so-hidden costs of growth in poisoned air and depleted soil. It seemed perverse that, if China spent money cleaning up its mess, that too would count as growth, much as GDP counts money spent to repair the damage after natural disasters, terrorist attacks or war. Any activity, it seemed — digging a hole and filling it up again — would do.

In GDP terms, Wikipedia, which puts the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips, is worth precisely nothing.

In my most recent job, as Africa editor, I discovered that GDP data — often treated as sacrosanct and used, for example, to determine appropriate levels of borrowing — were virtually meaningless. Normal methods of compiling GDP, which rely on costly surveys of businesses and households, were often too expensive for cash-strapped governments to undertake. Besides, they failed to account properly for activity in the massive informal and subsistence sectors. Terry Ryan, chairman of Kenya’s National Bureau of Statistics, told me that if — as the official data suggested — some 72 percent of Kenyans lived on a dollar or two a day, then “72 percent of my people are dead.”

In Nigeria, minor changes to methodology implemented in 2014 revealed that the economy was 89 percent bigger than assumed, making a mockery of previous estimates. Again in Kenya, one group of economists said they could monitor the economy more accurately than GDP from outer space. Satellite imagery of night lights showed that national income statistics were missing swathes of activity outside Nairobi, the capital.

As I began to read more in the course of researching a book, The Growth Delusion, I found that I was far from alone in my skepticism. There was a whole academic literature, a mini-industry becoming more respectable by the day, questioning the ability of GDP to reflect our lives.

Invented in the 1930s by Simon Kuznets, initially as a way of calculating the damage wrought by the Great Depression, GDP is a child of the manufacturing age. Good at keeping track of “things you can drop on your foot,” it struggles to make sense of the services — from life insurance and landscape gardening to stand-up comedy — that comprise some 80 percent of modern economies. The internet is more perplexing still. In GDP terms, Wikipedia, which puts the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips, is worth precisely nothing.

Nor does GDP have much useful to say about income distribution, one of the themes of our age. Kuznets warned urgently that his measure should never be confused with well-being. Yet in treating GDP as the nonpareil of numbers, it is a warning we have ignored.

Among GDP’s shortcomings, the distinction between flow of income and stock of wealth, highlighted by the story of Bill and Ben, is one of the most serious.

Partha Dasgupta, professor emeritus of economics at Cambridge University, has been trying to invent ways of measuring wealth for decades. The “rogue word” in gross domestic product, he says, is “gross”: “If a wetland is drained to make way for a shopping mall, the construction of the latter contributes to GDP, but the destruction of the former goes unrecorded.”

When I went to see Dasgupta, now in his mid-70s, at his rooms at St. John’s College, he began with the intricate interplay between wealth and income. One could think of it in terms of life planning, he said. A family might use income to purchase an asset — say, a house — or it might trade in an asset to pay for an education, which, in turn, could later be converted into higher income. With any entity — a family, a company or a nation — wealth is “what enables you to plan,” he said, by “converting one form of capital into another.”

With nations, some forms of capital are easier to count than others. So-called manufactured capital comprises investments in roads, ports and cities. It is relatively easy to value and many countries keep inventories of capital stock. Human capital is the size and skill of a workforce. Natural capital includes nonrenewables, such as oil and coal, and renewables, ranging from farmland to complex ecosystems that provide water, oxygen and nutrients.

Attempts to value some of these assets can appear absurd. In 1997, the environmental economist Robert Costanza caused an uproar with his estimate that the planet’s natural capital — “nature” to you and me — was worth $33 trillion. His sums, published in the scientific journal Nature, were pilloried by both conventional economists, who thought the exercise unscientific, and by environmentalists, who objected to the very idea of hanging a dollar tag on an ocean or a rainforest. Costanza found, for example, that lakes and rivers were “worth” $1.7 trillion, while nutrient cycling, an “ecosystem service,” provided $4.9 trillion of benefit to mankind.

To call his calculations back-of-the-envelope would be to malign envelopes. Yet when challenged on his methodology, he responded, “We do not believe there is any one right way to value ecosystem services. But there is a wrong way, and that is not to do it at all.”

Some economists view any attempt to account for natural depletion with suspicion. When I asked Lawrence Summers about it, he decried what he saw as a bogus attempt by environmentalists to limit growth. His main complaint was that wealth accountants were quick to shout when resources had been depleted, but slow to acknowledge when they had been augmented.

New technology, such as fracking and deep-sea drilling, Summers said, had increased exploitable oil and gas reserves. Video conferencing was a breakthrough that meant people could hold more international meetings while reducing travel-related emissions.

But wealth accountants, he said, were never honest enough to concede how innovation could add to wealth as well as subtract. “It’s all a doom-and-gloom operation,” he practically growled down the phone. “In favor of everybody staying at home. Everybody staying home and knitting.”

GDP is backward-looking. It merely tots up total production over a specific period in the past.

Summers is right that it is difficult to know how much current capital stock is worth, since its value can change depending on technological or political developments. Cobalt was once a mildly interesting byproduct of copper; now it’s a must-have component of electric car batteries. Oil has been liquid gold and may yet be again. But stricter environmental regulations could one day render it a stranded asset worth nothing.

More philosophically, it is hard to put a price on the future. One of the supposed virtues of wealth accounting is that it is forward-looking. It analyzes today’s stock of capital that will produce tomorrow’s income stream. GDP, on the other hand, is backward-looking. It merely tots up total production over a specific period in the past. So, in theory, wealth accounting should help one generation think about the next.

Yet in practice, as my colleague Martin Wolf told me, there are limits. We may love our children and their children and even their unborn children. But what about the children after them and those after them? “The question of sustainability is partly: Who cares about the future?” he said. In the long run, “we will all be zero-energy soup.”

Such practical and philosophical considerations aside, there is now real momentum behind wealth accounting, even among the most orthodox of institutions. This month, the World Bank will release the most comprehensive attempt yet to crack the problem.

“The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018” is the fruit of years of work by a dedicated team. It builds on research published in 2006 and 2011. In its latest iteration, the bank produces comprehensive wealth accounts for 141 countries between 1995 and 2014. For each country, there are estimates for “produced” capital, including urban land, machinery and infrastructure. Natural capital includes market values for subsoil assets, such as oil and copper, arable land, forests and conservative estimates for protected areas, which are priced as if they were farmland.

For the first time, the bank makes an explicit attempt to measure human capital. Using a database of 1,500 household surveys, it estimates the present value of the projected lifetime earnings of nearly everyone on the planet.

“We’re looking at GDP as a return on wealth,” says Glenn-Marie Lange, co-editor of the report and leader of the bank’s wealth accounting team. “Policymakers need this information to design strategies to ensure that their GDP growth is sustained in the long run.’’

Among the report’s findings, the full details of which are embargoed, is a huge shift of wealth over 20 years to middle-income countries, largely driven by the rise of China and other Asian countries. A third of low-income countries, however, especially in Africa, have suffered an outright fall in per capita wealth over that period, in what could be a dangerous omen about their capacity for future growth. In the world as a whole, the report finds, human capital represents a whopping 65 percent of total wealth. In 2014, this was $1,143 trillion, or about 15 times that year’s GDP.

The report is particularly illuminating in tracing the path to development as countries, in the manner described by Dasgupta, trade in one form of capital for another. Crudely put, they use income derived from natural resources to build up other forms of capital, principally in infrastructure, technology, health and education. So, while natural capital accounts for 47 percent of the wealth of low-income countries, it represents only 3 percent of the wealth of the most advanced.

The lesson, says Collier of the Blavatnik School and author of The Bottom Billion, a book about failing economies, is that spurts of GDP don’t tell you anything if you don’t know about underlying wealth. In Africa, countries such as Nigeria have converted resources into consumption booms, but have largely failed to build the infrastructure or invest in the healthy, educated population that will sustain future growth.

Much of Africa, says Collier, has “dug itself up and chopped itself down, but didn’t build enough in its place. It’s not sustainable growth. It’s a fiction of the flow data.” It is a lesson that Bill, the indebted banker with limited future earning prospects, would have done well to take to heart.

HsLBroker:

LRNZH post=64293337:
Why did AMCON take it over?

dustmalik:
One thing you guys must understand is that the Fulanis do not forget.

eaglejay13:


What's the use punishing yourself in order to punish others?

It was on 13 October 2000, when words went round that General Muhammadu Buhari was leading the Arewa team to the governor’s office to confront the state over alleged killings of Fulani cattle rearers in Saki, Oke Ogun Area of the state. Buhari did actually telephone the governor that he was leading a team to his office.

In less than 30 minutes after the general informed the governor of his visit, we noticed that the entire secretariat was already filled with lorry loads of our brothers from the North. This created some tension but we kept our calm. At about 2 p.m., Buhari arrived in a long convoy at the governor’s office in company of the former governor of Lagos State, General Buba Marwa, Alhaji Aliko Muhammed, Alhaji Abdulrazak and Alhaji Hassan. They all wore long faces. In fact, the anger in them was palpable as all pleasantries extended to them were ignored. “This is trouble” was the expression on the faces of all of us in the governor’s office.

Shortly afterwards, the state Director of State Security Service (SSS) and Commissioner of Police arrived. But their presence did not change anything particular on the fears that had already gripped majority of us. The two security chiefs did not come with any operatives, they came almost alone.

The meeting was called to order after Lam walked into the Executive Chambers. Introductions over, Buhari spoke on their mission to the governor’s office. Emitting fire, the general accused Lam and the government of Oyo State of complicity in the killing of over 68 Fulani people in Oke Ogun area and perversion of justice.

His words: “Your Excellency, our visit here is to discuss with you and your government our displeasure about the incident of clashes between two peoples… the Fulani cattle rearers and merchants are today being harassed , attacked and killed like in Saki. In the month of May, 2000, 68 bodies of Fulani cattle rearers were recovered and buried under the supervision and protection from a team of Mobile Police from Oyo State Command.

“ That some arrests were made by Oyo State Police Command in the massacre with their immediate release without court trial. This was said to have been ordered by Oyo State authorities and they were so released to their amazement. The release of the arrested suspects gave the clear impression that the authorities are backing and protecting them to continue the unjust and illegal killings of Fulani cattle rearers…”

According to the general, they therefore wanted immediate stoppage of the killings, justice and compensation to the Fulanis.

As weighty and indicting as Buhari’s allegations were, Lam remained unperturbed. He fired back with his own well coordinated arsenals.

Lam identified all the points raised by Buhari and simply asked the heads of the organizations directly involved to respond to the allegations.

First to speak was the Commissioner of Police who debunked all the claims. Instead of the allegation that the natives were killing Fulanis, the commissioner said pointedly that the opposite was the case.

“ The killing of the natives by the Fulanis was duly reported to the police and, of course, we can’t make arrest because, as soon as they kill, they migrate to other areas. Who are you going to arrest? That is the problem”. On the killing of Fulanis, which he said was as result of “piled up anger”, the commissioner disclosed that arrests had been made and the suspects were in police custody.

Next was the Director of SSS, who equally debuked the allegations by Buhari. “The natives don’t have problem with the Fulanis who are resident but those who are coming in, they don’t care about anybody. They just go ahead and when they graze the natives farms, whoever cares to challenge them runs into trouble. You said 68 people were killed , and people driven away. I am not saying there were no killings but they cannot be more than five. The petition is on the harsh side, there is nothing like that.”

Not done yet, Lam called in his Deputy, Barrister Iyiola Oladokun; his SSG, Chief Michael Koleoso, both from Oke Ogun, and the chairman of one of the affected local government areas, Mr Ademola Alalade. They stated the true position of things, corroborating the submissions of the security chiefs. At this point, all the tensions and apprehensions evaporated.

Trust Lam any day, he must rub it in. He spoke for about 20 minutes and the generals were at the edge of their seats for the entire period. They were like chicken that had just been thoroughly beaten by the rain.

Lam said: “ Before I thank you for this visit, you have come to tell me something. I also want to tell you something and that something is to make an appeal. General Buhari has been a former Head of State, Brigadier Marwa has governed Lagos for some time and with credibility… so you are national leaders of this country. Even though, by accident of birth, you are from the North, you can be born anywhere; may be next time when I am coming to the world, I will be born in the North or the South-South.

“My appeal will be that effort must be made to unite this country and that will be ïn the best interest of all Nigerians. I am appealing to the Arewa Consultative Forum, under which auspices our distinguished Nigerians are here; in recent times, they have been sending wrong signals to a number of us who believe in the unity and peace of Nigeria; you have been too critical of the efforts of the Federal Government. I am saying this because Nigeria, at this point, cannot afford to break and the words you northern leaders utter are very weighty, at the South here, we normally analyze them critically”.

On all the allegations, he said: “From what they have written in the petition, this government is completely blameless because we don’t interfere either with the judiciary or with the police functions. I always preach peaceful co-existence in Oyo State and Nigeria as a whole. We are all Nigerians and that is what we have been preaching all along and we shall continue to be Nigerians , no matter the present or immediate problems which will be solved by the grace of Allah.

“I want to say also that we really have to appeal to our people, the itinerant Bororo people, that they should observe less aggression. It is not good , it is not right just coming from somewhere then you just pass through farm lands cultivated may be with the person’s life savings and then over night everything is gone. That is not right, even Allah does not approve of that.

We even wonder when they talk about this people carrying dangerous weapons, I say do they really believe in Allah? When you just take life like that and go away! Are we not forbidden not to take human life? So I think General Buhari, General Marwa, you have to be educating them… It is my pleasure to inform you that at the Presidential Lodge, we have made some arrangements for refreshments so that before you go we can refresh together”.

Buhari and his team did not wait for any refreshments. They came in angry and left bewildered.

tuniski:

The question is whether red card is a political party or a pressure group?
As it stands APC/PDP can't just be dismissed with red card!

tuniski:
It is only hot air no substance. Is red card a political party?

"I have a Political Agenda for 2019 Elections.

It is that neither APC nor its twin brother (yes, how does 6 differ from half a dozen?) PDP should win the 2019 State and Federal legislative and executive Elections.

I am totally committed to this Agenda."

onojiwizardgmailcom:
that project has been on since 2014, when I visited katsina in 2014 I saw those turbines on the ground like it is in the picture, that project is not new.

docadams:


May be the link below will help

https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrBT9fEJFJa8KQAw8Zx.9w4;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=katsina+windmill+power+projec

yaki84:

point number 1, never argue with a zombie!

Shebi fizznation don show, u r in for it.

They believed that gej was an alcoholic even without foto proof, but they with this foto proof they say na lie make dem see video proof.

We are waiting for them to show us evidence.

They don't understand that fact checking government is one way to keep them on their toes to deliver on promises rather than believe government hook line and sinker until it is too late.

We dey wait o....
Lalasticlala and Mynd44 come and see your people

progress69:


So we should believe u because of "dem say" ?

U must be high on pig dung

U posted a picture of just a windmill probably still under construction, while there are several others standing erect already and used that to call the president a liar.
Does Nigeria's progress give u guys headache or what. All u want to hear is negative news.
!

fiizznation:
I'm telling you. Just look at how the op emphasised "my friend" as if his so-called friend is angel Gabriel or somebody that doesn't lie.

progress69:


many of u call Buhari a retired commissioned officer a dullard but the reverse is the case. many of u that just make noise and type rubbish on the internet are semi educated illiterates. now take a look at the pic again and see how u goofed.

and of the OP, the pic could have been taken anytime nd some hater will just come here and lie it was taken at another time. we have seen a lot of that on the cyber space.

"......Consequently, generation has now reached 7,000MW. On December 8, 2017 the country achieved 5,155MW of power delivered to consumers, the highest level ever recorded.

Several moribund projects have been revived. Repairs of Afam Power Station added 110MW in 2017 and another 240MW will be added this year through a private investment partnership.

Katsina Power Project is now being tested and producing 10MW of power from wind for the first time in Nigeria. It should be fully operational this year.

The Zungeru 700MW Hydroelectric Power Project, stalled by court cases is due for completion in 2019. The transmission and other requirements to operate the 30MW Gurara Phase 1 Hydroelectric Plant, the 40MW Kashimbilla Hydroelectric Plant and the 215 MW Kaduna Gas/LPG/Diesel Power Plant will also be completed this year.

A landmark project, Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project is at last taking off. This project has been on the drawing Board for 40 years, but now the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the 3,050MW project has been agreed with a Chinese joint venture Company with a financing commitment from the government of China. Completion is targeted for 2023.

As I mentioned earlier, the Transmission Company of Nigeria can now distribute all the 7,000MW that can be generated. TCN and the Niger Delta Holding Company have added 1,950MVA of 330 down to 132KV transformer capacity of 10 transmission stations and 2,930MVA of 132 down to 33KV transformer capacity of 42 sub-stations including Ikot Ekpene, Aba, Alagbon, Ajah, Ejigbo, Funtua and Zaria.