The gym, cinema and lobby in those photos are from an apartment block, not a house! A lot of the newer apartments in the City, Canary Wharf and other parts of London have similar amenities for residents. Whoever put the video together either didn't verify or is just intentionally misleading.

Nigeria is hardly democratic. It's more of a petro-state that holds 'symbolic' elections. You know which other countries hold elections and no reasonable person thinks of them as democratic? Russia, Iran just to name a couple. Even China hold elections (for one party but still they do).

Buhari operates like a quasi-dictator because that's all he knows and he's enabled by the diseases of religiosity and xenophobia that are themselves fuelled by desperation, fear, ignorance, mutual suspicion and lack of a sense of belonging to a common cause/project as a country. Not even mentioning his inadequate personal attributes, he should have been automatically ruled out of contesting due to his previous coup to gain power.

henrybangs44:

America is not successful because of democracy. America is successful because of good leaders. There are other successful countries that don't practice democracy.

Is your current president not a Democratic president? What has he done to u with the democracy?

But there are a lot more successful countries that are democratic! It's much easier for a country to develop when it's inclusive aka democratic. Consistently near the top of all credible measures of standard of living, life satisfaction, economic development & even social cohesion are countries in north/northwestern europe. Countries with a social safety net, quality education, healthcare and accountability all enabled by a stable and inclusive democratic process that gives citizens a strong and loud voice.

You're probably thinking of China as a successful country that isn't democratic. While this is true when you compare it to African countries and some in Asia, you can't compare the standard of living of the average Chinese to the average Norwegian, Dane, Finn etc Also, unless you're a muslim (nothing against muslims) doubt you'd want to live in a country like Saudi, where leaders have absolute power, you can't even criticize them, and where science takes a back seat to religion. The stand out country that got developed via autocratic means is Singapore, but that is an anomaly. If you get a dictator or autocratic ruler, the incentive for the ruler is to weaken the institutions of governance in order to control the country in perpetuity.

The chances of getting a 'benevolent dictator' like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore are so tiny, it's like winning the lottery. Getting a bad dictator is much more likely and the negative impact is so bad (as with Nigeria and so many others) it should never be an aspiration for Nigerians.

I don't know him personally but the VP seems to be a decent man. It's helpful he's pitching Nigeria as an attractive place for investment (big improvement on his half-wit boss who goes around the world denigrating the country), but it's nowhere near sufficient to start the serious work of fixing all the stuff that's wrong.

It's a bit of a misplacement of priorities to push for private investment when basic conditions of a stable, responsive, inclusive and competent government are totally lacking. Imagine planning to extend your house, build more rooms, without any plan first to fix the foundation or load bearing walls that are f**ked.

With the right conditions, this wouldn't be necessary. Institutional investors are typically shrewd and hardly need to be prompted if they assess Nigeria to be a conducive place to invest in. This is not to say there won't be any investors as there already are (high risk environment with a small chance of high rewards will always attract some), but it's just tiny percentages of portfolios (the most speculative) at the moment and will remain so regardless of soundbites, until conditions are acceptable.