₦airaland Forum

one chance

that guy is a lazy and attention seeking writer.
every time he writes he exposes his stupidity.

You have the Holy Spirit who is the Wisdom of God living within you and the best method you come up with as a crowd control mechanism is gate fee.

has Gary Neville announced his retirement yet?

yeast

moremi2008:
Pat can scream all he wants and the educated elite can applaud him as loudly as they want but he is not getting anywhere near Aso Rock unless he can out-spend and out-maneuver the touts and louts. Nigerians like to hold on to this delusion that some great, intelligent, honest man is going to rise from somewhere and sweep the elections in a great showing of democracy. It's NOT going to happen. Nigerian politics run on patronage. Patronage needs lots and lots of money. In short, our political offices are for sale to the highest bidder (and it should be no surprise that it's only former military dictators and their friends that can afford to pay for the office of the President).

You guys can continue arguing until tomorrow comes, good luck!

they will call you a pessimist but at least you are realistic.
However, there will be a little chance of change if the 'good' guys come together and join forces.
As long as each is satisfied sitting in his own little corner and doing his own thing and feeling good with himself, your prophecy will forever come to pass.

[quote author=X-factoria link=topic=578901.msg7461642#msg7461642 date=1294167659][


Yes SLS did not openly condem Pat Utomi but can you honestly exonerate Pat Utomi from the mess in that Bank?

Guy, there is a whole lot of difference between Pan African University and a bank. You need me to tell you that? And what position does Pat Utomi hold in Pan African University? Don't forget that there are foreigners involved in the running of that school; and it is an academic institution and expectedly, Pat Utomi shoud fit in properly there. The complexity of running a financial institution with the attendant risk is not comparable to a school. Since you claim to be a Risk Mgr, can you properly put in perspective the risk associated with running both organizations?

To tell you which bank is properly managed? Check out GTB and FBN. I can vouch for these banks anyday! Mind you, I've been around for a while.

[b][/b]

Who has mentioned Jonathan here?? Anyway, if I must compare him with Utomi, Pat Utomi would not score more than Jonathan in my assessment. They both hold PhDs. Pat Utomi has not proven to be a seasoned administrator, so his economics background will be greatly discounted. We don't need anybody to come and bobo us with theories. The rigour of Nigerian politics alone will suffocate Utomi. Jonathan has an egde there. However, Jonathan is not my ideal candidate. In fact, I'm still looking for one.[/quote]How any sane person can exonerate Prof. Utomi from the mess that is PHB beats me.
Listing his success at Pan-African university to discount his failure at PHB is as hollow as an argument can get.
No one says he is infallible.
The board of PHB were either guilty of negligence or collusion.
claiming neither of the above demeans the role of a board and the integral part corporate governance plays in the business world.

May Utomi will educate us on his role in PHB,the same way he has educated us on his Volkswagen days.

sochan:
@Mbulela and Ibime,

Listen guys, Utomi means well, but I get your point about teaming up to provide a formidable and credible opposition. It is hard in Nigeria where everyone wants to rule. Pat has a deep conviction about wanting to lead Nigeria in the right direction. but let us keep watching. I have great admiration for those willing to risk all to try. Lets not forget that to participate in elections in Nigeria remains a serious risk to life

in that sense, he is no different from Atiku and Jonathan.
many of us believe in him,the same way we believe in Ribadu, Falana et al.
The question is why can't they come together and form a team strong enough to dismantle this evil force holding us hostage?
How feasible is it for him to conquer while forming all these cheesy parties that i can't even identify?

Ibime:
You would know I dont need to hail the man. His record is there for all to see as one of our respected citizens.

However the Nobel Prize comment is a jor oh! moment!!!

Noted and i agree it is a jor oh! moment indeed.
When i read the article and saw it, i blushed with my black face
okay, let us move on.

my problem with Pat and progressives of his kind is their inability to form a viable collation to dislodge these barbarians in power.
Instead they go around forming mushroom parties that will not win a single ward election and postulating high sounding manifestos that the average Nigerian cannot relate to.
I am beginning to think that the progressives are as much to blame as the barbarians at  the gate.
Why can't men of like passion put their selfish desires and dreams aside and come together and rescue this entity called Nigeria.
Now i want to vote and i can't find a decent aspirant with a chance of wining to vote for.
Maybe i will just settle for Buhari.

mrjingles:
This statement is regrettable. People that should be hailed as great thinkers are being put down by keyboard experts, who cannot even understand the crux of the matter. No respect for solid minds, that's the tragedy of Nigeria, our history has been lost to beer parlour arguments and younglings who get their history from hints magazine, encomium and city people. Big shame.

If a list of foremost Nigerian intellectuals and thinkers is ever compiled he would feature high up on it. But of course we don't do such things in this cash and carry, corruption promoting, mediocrity celebrating,morally bankrupt american tv addicted  country

Don't worry, the 'breath of fresh air' kid is on the block.
Suddenly, all shall be well.

Ibime:
Excuse me if Im dumb but asking for Nigeria to focus on areas where it has competitive advantage is not Nobel prize winning and Utomi should not be comparing his idea that Nigeria should focus on the production of rubber parts to Nobel Prize winning stuff.

If so, Awolowo would have won Nobel prize for directing the Western Region economy to its area of competitive advantage - Cocoa production!

you and i know that the nobel prize comment was not the crux of the matter.
Why not address the crux of the matter and leave such side comments.

a breath of fresh air 

Ben Obi is a tool

EACH time people, out of mischief, or ignorance, raise my Volkswagen of Nigeria experience as a negative in my career, I am amazed at the ease with which people expose themselves to be showed up as ignorant and, sometimes, to being humiliated. Those who have tried it face to face at public events have walked away with bruises as the facts I will restate here, show. The amazing thing about this strange matter of Volkswagen is that it is for me the biggest manifestation of God’s favour to me as a decision maker. But first the facts.

I joined Volkswagen of Nigeria in 1986 as Corporate Affairs Manager. Before I joined, the Germans were already planning to pull out, given frustrations with the Nigerian government. You can read an interview in Europe’s Manager Magazine in 1987 by the former MD of Volkswagen of Nigeria Klaus von Bothmer. Indeed the head-hunting that brought me to VWN followed riots in the factory which weakened the commitment of VWAG who had waited years for the government to pay its second capital call of less than 80 million Naira.

Within two weeks of my joining the company Nigeria announced it was embarking on a Structural Adjustment Programme. In my view, assembly operations of an Import Substitution Industrialization Strategy like Nigeria was pursuing had no chance of surviving unless there was a quick change of strategy that focused on areas we were competitive in as an economy. I said so openly and wrote an opinion piece in This Week magazine predicting the demise of companies like VWN.

Few had an understanding of the point I was making. Some actually accused me of not defending the company I had just joined. I dared then to predict the de-industrialization that has since happened. One of those who understood the point I was making about redirecting competitive manufacturing in the direction export led industrialization and getting companies like VWN to focus on producing components in which Nigeria was endowed to compete in was then CBN Deputy Governor Victor Odozi. His call to commend my courage remains one of the high points of my involvement with the debate on the direction Nigeria’s then much troubled economy should take.

I would move up quickly from Corporate Affairs manager to Deputy Managing Director. In that position I tried to persuade the board that my view of the future of the company was in the VW Group assigning to VWN the business of producing one or two rubber components in the cars for deployment into the global supply chain of the company.

In my view that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in Nigeria and fetch us foreign exchange income that could compete with crude oil, as Nigeria had one of the best yields per hectare in the world. I even made the presentation on this at the very first Nigerian economic summit in 1993 with then Michelin MD Jean Claude Deithel. Just as Michelin got fed up with the lack of seriousness of policy and eventually shut their factory in Nigeria, the VW people politely told me my country was not serious enough to risk such an ordinarily reasonable strategy.
Interestingly, one of the people who interviewed me at the time was a Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for African Economies at Oxford, Paul Collier. Three years ago UNIDO commissioned Collier to study China’s rapid industrialization and what Africa could learn from it. At the end of the study Collier told me that China had done precisely what I had recommended Nigeria do with companies like VWN. The consequence for China was that one local government in China produces 75 per cent of all the burtons in the world. The Nnewi, Aba or Kano clusters could easily have gone the same way had someone paid attention to me.

At an occasion where I discussed Nigeria’s unfortunate de-industrialization and job creation, a few years ago, I talked about my suggestions in 1988 and an American Labour Economist who had been on assignment to the BPE in Abuja said to me that my 1988 ideas were the stuff Nobel Prizes in Economics were made of. When I told him some poorly informed people actually think that run was a poor one and a basis for insulting me he laughed so much he nearly fell off his chair. Welcome to public discussion in underdeveloped environments.

What actually amuses me about these remarks is that many who make them are totally without clue about the times they discuss. One who raised it on a day I was in sour mood heard enough of what he did not know that he felt obliged to write a letter of apology and bring it himself, saying he was an undergraduate at the time with very little understanding of the issues. As I told him, my real puzzle is how if Pat Utomi was responsible for end of CKD assembly at VWN, the fact that it came two years after I served out my term and left on my own notwithstanding, who was responsible in Steyr and NTM and almost all of manufacturing that once contributed nearly 13 per cent of GDP but today contributes less than three per cent of GDP. Surely we would have to blame all the expatriate and Nigerian executives for the collapse of manufacturing.

Truth is that my struggle to move policy down the track that would have shaped a more prosperous future anchored on comparative advantage from value chains of factor endowments were not part of my remit as an executive at VWN and was really the outcome of share grace and force of personality. As spare tyre (deputy), with full management authority domiciled in the foreign technical partner, I should be of as much consequence in anything as the Deputy Governor of a State in Nigeria. People like Air Vice Marshal Mohammed Yahaya who are still around acknowledge like many of the former German executives my leadership role in keeping the company around long past the demise time forecast by Mr. von Bothmer at the time I was joining the company.

Sometimes I wish decisions I made could be found related to where the industry is. I would acknowledge them as part of my failings from which I can fall forward. As one who believes in a great return on experience for failed effort I have never shied away from acknowledging failure. This particular subject is therefore a source of irritation because it is spurious and baseless and a great paradox because I am more proud of the choices I made back then than most things I have done since.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=34392:utomi-utomi-and-volkswagen-of-nigeria&catid=38:columnists&Itemid=615
• Professor Utomi is a Presidential aspirant in the 2011 general elections

by the way, fine track.

shakomende:
Now on Youtube. Listen below. Better than your favorite track on M.I. 2?

[flash=425,344]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1-aqGGwf3s?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash]

how did MI come into this discussion?
MI is way above Naeto C's level, don't even go there.
No need digging the guy's grave for him.

how about a similar toll gate on Bourdillon Road?

Hamba - Lira

Lira - Soul in Mind

your dad is not alone.
i remember my cousin's husband asking his then 12 year old daughter if she had worn her sanitary pad soon after she dressed up before going to school.
This was in the UK where kids are generally very independent.
I almost blushed in shame with my black face.
I felt so much pity for the poor girl as she wanted to ground to open and swallow her up.
But i know her father is so protective and worries himself sick over his daughter's welfare but he does not worry that much for his other kids.

jacobs123:
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu's financial Engineers came up with a good plan to enrich him and they formed a company called LCC.

you may be right on this but a concrete proof would be appreciated.
It would alter the dynamics of this argument and make things easier.

Jarus, this is the 4th time i am asking this question:
What is political in this topic?
What is it doing in this section?
Kindly move it to where it belongs.
Thank you.

jacobs123:
No to Suspension, We want Cancellation! NO TOLLING, NO FENCING!!!

bros, we need to be pragmatic o!
you want NO everything?so who will pay for the 50billion already spent?
you might not like the idea of PPP but it is a reality of present day.
a govt that can't be held to its word is not worth the pay (money) it prints.
IGR and taxes will never be enough.
as usual, the truth is in the middle.

I have been unable to got through all the posts here (i am pretending to have a life ) but i have read most and while the posts are well thought out (irrespective of the side of the divide the posters choose to argue from), no one seems to have looked at this matter holistically.
This is just not an argument about the suitability of tolls or the appropriateness of same at this point in time on that road, the matter is complicated by the perception that LCC is owned by the BAT.While arguing for or against the toll and deciding on the appropriate time to begin charging it, the issue of LCC ownership need to be addressed at the same time.
Some people have no problems with toll charges on that road but are vehemently against it on account of the fact that it is akin to 2nd slavery by BAT.
Imagine paying tithe to Tinubu everyday for 30 years?
While i have argued elsewhere (the Sahara London interview) that the onus rests on the accusers to provide evidence, this issue has to be addressed now, else this matter will be hijacked for other purposes.

three tolls on an uncompleted road with no alternative of acceptable quality?
This is a no brainer.

[quote author=must_a_far link=topic=576641.msg7434517#msg7434517 date=1293723545]correct me if i am wrong, but it seems to me like Nigeria has entered "one chance"[/quote]Gbam!!

This is one hell of a ride.

Jarus, are you game?

I am willing to take a real life bet (not some e-bet) that nothing will come out of the investigations into this bayelsa bombing, the independence bombing, the jos killings and any other bombing that will go off in the country between now and May 29th next year.
I am willing to bet a C of O for a parcel of land in a prime location in one of the country's major cities.
A lawyer in the house can vet the process.

It is about time we start putting our hands where our mouths are.
Enough of these sickening sycophancy that tends to hoodwink us into believing that this is any different from the decaying leadership of the past.
When i say nothing, i mean absolutely nothing.

mikeansy:
John Togo in his current interview with saharareporters claimed that somebody called him on behalf of the Presidency asking him to postpone hostilities until after election. (think about it? postpone hostilities until after elections).

I hope that revelation is false but unfortunately going by the antecedents of this Presidency I have more reasons to believe that claim than doubt it.

The unfortunate implication of this revelation if true is[b] that we have a Presidency more interested in their political future than the security of our country[/b]; with a thinking like that you can see why bombings and all kinds of terrorisms or militancy will not end anytime soon.

the real koko of the matter.