₦airaland Forum

MayorofLagos: naptu,

Long time...how are you?

Addey1: Just want to drop my own two cents on the area referred to as Lagos Colony.

Going by the http://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/ilharvest/Africana/Books2011-05/3064634/3064634_1898_lagos/3064634_1898_lagos_opt.pdf, the Lagos Colony is not today's "Lagos Island,Ikoyi Victoria Island up to Ebute Metta" as omonnakoda thought. Pazienza was spot on. See excerpts from sections of the colonial report:

58. The construction of the railway made good progress, as did also that of the bridges connecting Lagos Island with the mainland. At the present time the line is open for the conveyance of passengers to Abeokuta but it has not yet been handed over to a railway department immediately under the control of the Local Government. If all goes well the line to Ibadan should be completed by the end of next year, and it is hoped that the bridges will be opened for traffic at the end of January or beginning of February next year

59. During the year a good many miles were constructed in the neighbourhood of Otta, in Jebu Remo, Jebu Ode, Ibadan, Iwo, and Oyo territory, a sum of over £700 being expended on this service

Furthermore, section 41 says Even in Lagos itself the floating population is so large that anything like an accurate estimate cannot be formed. I believe, however, that when the census of 1901 is taken a slight increase will be found in the population of Lagos Island while that of the Colony must be considerably larger, in view of the fact that an extensive portion of the Jebu country was ceded to Her Majesty in 1894.

This to me means that "Lagos itself" is a section of the "Colony of Lagos", not the whole.

Silkmoth33: thank u so much.

[size=14pt]General Buhari: A Whole Former Head of State! By Pius Adesanmi[/size]
Sep 27, 2014

If you are in your thirties and above and anybody is deceiving you that the just and fair Nigeria we are struggling for will happen in your life time, please do not deceive yourself.


If you are in your thirties and above and anybody is deceiving you that the just and fair Nigeria we are struggling for will happen in your life time, please do not deceive yourself. Struggling for the dreamable, refusing to relinquish the imaginable, hanging on stubbornly to the possible, as some of us are doing 24/7, are all praxes that must be rooted in pragmatism and an acknowledgment of the degree of the rot.


The rot that will prevent you and this writer from seeing a reimagined and remade Nigeria is not corruption. It is not Boko Haram. It is none of the unending dysfunctionalities and irrationalities of statehood that have turned the Nigerian tragedy into a nightmare from which Africa struggles to awake.

The rot that will prevent the Nigerian renaissance from happening in my life time is not even summed up by the fact that we have now effectively surpassed every available model of the corruption, abuse, and misuse of sovereign statehood known to man. Although I will not hold my breath, I want to wager all the same that the record set by an irresponsible sovereign state when she goes to the doorstep of another sovereign state to claim and own such grievous crimes as cash trafficking and gun running, all in the bid to shield powerful interests, will not be broken quickly. And if this record will be broken at all, it is safe to bet that it is only this international crime-owning state that will ultimately beat its own prolific record in the manufacturing of horror.

Again, this is not why I will not see the Nigerian renaissance. I will not see the Nigeria of the promised land because we have too many citizens who have been so deprived of civic education that the mere mention of the crime owned for the Nigerian state in South Africa by Nigeria’s irresponsible rulers is sacrilegious and unpatriotic. The mind that has been manufactured to constantly justify, rationalize, explain, and identify with every horror while criminalizing the faintest manifestation of critique is the greatest threat to the emergence of a new Nigeria. The mind that mistakes a fetid personality cult of the incumbent for patriotism is the greatest obstacle to national becoming. It has taken the rulers of Nigeria some five decades of abject postcolonial statehood to produce this mind. It will take four to five generations to undo the damage because it is easier to destroy than to build. I repeat: if it took them five decades to destroy the Nigerian psychology and produce the mass mumufication we witness today, it will take five generations to demumufy the Nigerian psychology. And that is where there is the will o.

I have written time and again that the collapse of Nigeria’s educational system is not an accident. It is deliberate. It is purposed. A state that is going to be run based on ethos and practices deemed crude by the standards of Orangutan society needs a sedated and diseducated citizenry that is hostile to critique in order to survive and perpetuate herself. And when that state succeeds in manufacturing a critical mass of consent and conformity such as we see in Nigeria, the triumphant ruling class has only one responsibility unto itself: the sustenance of a wrongly-wired psychology in a vast majority of the citizenry.

That is why I pity members of the Nigerian community of conscience who are fighting corruption without paying attention to public instruction. Without civics, the diseducated – and I have deliberately created that word, diseducated, to imply deliberateness on the part of those doing the diseducating – citizen is in the pocket of his oppressor. He will identify with his oppressor on the basis of ethnicity, faith, language, etc. If you insist, he will abuse your father and abuse your mother. He will ask you: “wetin be your own sef? Na your money e steal?” You struggle for Nigeria in vain in the context of this sort of mass psychology.

Public instruction is therefore the place to start. A sustained struggle in the arena of public instruction may create the conditions that could facilitate the emergence of the Nigeria of our dreams five generations from now. Time is of the essence. Every teachable moment must be grabbed to work on the Nigerian psychology. Yes, it has been so damaged, so corroded, so wrongly wired that you don’t even know where to start. But start we must.

An occasion presented itself to me today. In the fevered brain of the leadership of APC, it is somehow okay to ask aspiring presidential candidates to cough out twenty-seven million naira for nomination forms! I thought this was madness. I thought that this constantly fumbling political party has bungled yet another opportunity to stand apart from the ways of PDP. I issued a statement on my Facebook Wall condemning the fee. I zoomed in particularly on three of the party’s aspiring candidates: General Muhammadu Buhari, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah. If these men succeed in paying twenty-seven million naira, I enjoined the party to insist on an open declaration of the source of the money as a way of showing that they are different from PDP.

As reactions flowed on my Wall, one compatriot preferred to send a private note to me by email. He identifies with the spirit of my argument, he says. In fact, he likes my submissions a lot. But, as a Buhari loyalist, he is somehow irked by my suggestion that “General Buhari, a whole former Head of State”, may not have twenty-seven million naira and may need some help to find it. Haba Prof, he says. Twenty-seven million may sound like big money to you guys out there, he continues, it is weekend party money for boys “around here”. Of course, I am familiar with the fact that certain layers of Nigerian society crawl in loads of easy, free money.

I pondered what to say to him, realizing the immensity of this teachable moment. I wondered where to start since the opinion he expressed is a window into a mindset that is deeply rooted in the Nigerian psychology – and there can be no progress until we reteach and rewire this psychology. Do I begin by telling him that in responsible democracies, the fact that General Buhari has held that office is the first and loudest reason why he should find it difficult to afford twenty-seven million naira? Do I tell him that the fact that Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdusalam Abubakar occupied the same office and ended up with hilltop mansion way beyond the totality of their entire earnings in their military careers is the first reason why they both ought to be serving life sentences in Gashua prison? Do I tell him that public office is a huge sacrifice in responsible democracies because you foreclose the possibility of making money? Do I tell him how long it took the Clintons to get out of debt after office? Do I tell him about the student loan and Chicago mortgage of the Obamas? They finally paid off their student loans but I am not sure about that Chicago mortgage.

Do I tell him why people resign after a short stint in the cabinet in serious democracies? They resign to go and make money. They cannot make money while serving in public office. Ask Ari Fleischer how much he was making on the podium in the White House and how much he now makes as a conservative pundit. Do I tell him that Karl Rove makes more now than he could ever have made working in the White House? Do I tell him that in France, our friends, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, are struggling with legal bills - and all kinds of bills?

Do I tell him that if anybody comes out of public office rich and comfortable, it is your duty as a citizen to raise eyebrows and pester the tax authorities until they open an investigation? Do I tell him that the mindset which produces that famous Nigerian sentence, “a whole so and so cannot be expected not to have such and such amount of money”, is a function of the psychology that the Nigerian ruling class is sustaining in order to mass-produce a citizenry that permanently justifies looting? Haba!, goes the Nigerian, how can you expect a whole State Governor not to be able to afford such and such? How can you expect a whole Senator not to be able to afford that house? The man don arrange o. You better keep quiet, you hater!

And we ask no questions even when they brandish stuff beyond their legitimate income in the public sphere. Not so long ago, the outgoing Governor of Ekiti state, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, made a lot of noise about students he was sending for University education abroad from his own pocket. More than a dozen or so students enjoyed a personal scholarship of Dr. Fayemi to go to OxBridge in Britain and Ivy League destinations in the United States. People who ought to know and people who don’t know went to town celebrating and praising Dr. Fayemi. Nobody bothered to think about a year’s tuition as an international student in an American Ivy League. Nobody bothered to weigh the tuition fees of the students he sent to Britain and the United States from his own private pocket against the backdrop of Dr. Fayemi’s legitimate monthly income as a state governor. Why did it not occur to anybody to ask questions? You guessed right: howu, how can you say that a whole state governor cannot afford it? Na poverty mentality dey worry you!

So, dear friend, when the candidates of APC begin to pick up presidential nomination forms for twenty-seven million naira, your responsibility as a Nigerian citizen is to ask questions about the source of the money. And if any Stockholm Syndromed compatriot abuses you, saying, “how can you expect a whole Lagbaja and a whole Tamedun not to be able to afford twenty-seven million naira”, do not abuse him or her in return. Show some sympathy. Show some understanding. Show some love. Show that you know the origins of his or her psychology. Remember, unless you act and teach this wrongly-wired psychology, you will not witness Nigeria’s renaissance in your life time. For the greatest tragedy is that the consequence of ignorance is democratically suffered. Those who know suffer the consequences of the ignorance of those who do not know in equal measure. Alakoba ni won.

Therefore, you must educate that psychology so that your children’s children may stand a chance of witnessing the beginning of Nigeria’s renaissance. And if they abuse you as you try to educate their psychology, shake off the dust of thine feet in testimony against them.

mike404: The Federal High Court in Lagos today (Wednesday) ordered the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to pay a lawyer, Kameos Omosivwe, the sum of N200, 000 as damages for unlawfully impounding his vehicle.

Presiding Judge, Justice Okon Abang said the action of LASTMA in impounding Omosivwe’s vehicle and forcing him to pay illegal fines, is an assumption of judicial functions, and as such he declared it null and void.

The court also held that the lawyer was at liberty to seek leave of court, to commence contempt proceedings against one Adewumi Adeosun, an officer of LASTMA who was involved in the impoundment.

The lawyer had gone before the court to challenge the wrongful detention of his vehicle by LASTMA officials for several months.

He filed the suit on Feb. 15, seeking a declaration that the detention of his vehicle by LASTMA, was an affront on his right to fair hearing as enshrined in the constitution.

Omosivwe also sought a declaration that the imposition of a fine on his vehicle by the respondent, constitutes a violation of his freedom to own movable properties.

Justice Abang in his judgment, apart from awarding N200,000 against LASTMA, also awarded a cost of N20,000 for the action.

He further held that the action of the respondent was a gross misrepresentation of the law.

The court also noted that although the respondent had contended that the LASTMA Laws 2004, as enacted by the Lagos State House of Assembly, empowers its officers to carry out their duties, such laws cannot negate the principles of separation of power.

The judge further maintained that such laws cannot confer judicial powers on the respondent, since judicial powers of the constitution are only vested in a court of law.

http://www.channelstv.com/home/2013/12/04/court-awards-n200000-against-lastma-for-impounding-lawyers-vehicle/

naptu2: [size=14pt]Lastma Can’t Impose Fine On Traffic Offenders – Court[/size] by superior1: 8:21am On Sep 22, 2011

superior1:
LASTMA can’t impose fine on traffic offenders – Court
On September 22, 2011 · In News

By INNOCENT ANABA

LAGOS- Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Lagos, has declared that Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA, lacks the power to impose fine on traffic offenders.

Delivering judgment in the suit filed by Mr. Jonathan Odutola, Justice Abang declared that sections 9, 11, 12 and 13 of the law establishing LASTMA is unconstitutional and of no effect.

The judge not only awarded N500,000 against LASTMA, but stated that the four sections of its law were contrary to Section 36 of the Constitution, which gives the right of fair- hearing to every Nigerian.

He held that while LASTMA has the power to arrest traffic offenders, it does not have the powers to impose fine on them, adding that instead, it is a court of law that has power to impose fine on anybody who contravenes the law.

The judge submitted that the imposition of fine on any traffic offender by LASTMA amounted to being a judge in its own cause.

He said: “Sections 9, 11, 12, and 13 of the law establishing LASTMA is unconstitutional. It is against the spirit of the Section 36 of the Constitution, which gives right of fair-hearing to every Nigerian. Moreover, that would amount to being a judge in your own cause.”


Odutola had dragged LASTMA to court for unlawfully impounding his car and imposing and slamming an illegal fine on him.

In the suit, he stated that last March, while driving his car on Third Mainland Bridge, it suddenly developed some mechanical problems.

According to him, to ensure that the car did not obstruct free flow of traffic, he immediately called a towing-van which towed the vehicle completely out of the road.

He said he also paid towing-van operator some money for the service rendered.

Odutola stated that he also called his mechanics to come and rescue him and the vehicle, adding that as soon as the mechanics arrived, some policemen patrolling the bridge who apparently wanted him to give them money refused them to work on the car.

When he insisted, Odutola and the mechanics were thoroughly beaten and harassed.

The policemen then called LASTMA officials at Sura, Lagos Island, who immediately came and towed the applicant’s car to their office and consequently slammed him with a fine if he must get his car back.

https://www.nairaland.com/765555/lastma-t-impose-fine-traffic

naptu2: The criminal justice system is structured in this manner.

Investigators/prosecutors: Law enforcement officers (eg lastma and the police) investigate and arrest offenders.

The DPP's office (and sometimes law enforcement officers) prosecute the cases. Basically, they are accusing you of committing a crime.

Judiciary: The judge is meant to adjudicate over the matter and determine if you are guilty or not and if the state is at fault. The judge should be impartial. 

Judiciary/jury: They determine guilt and sentence offenders.

Now, how can one agency accuse you of a crime, decide that you are guilty and sentence you to pay a fine (or impound your car)? Will they be impartial and fair?

[size=14pt]]DOWNLOAD AUDIO Recording Of TB Joshua Allegedly Bribing Journalists To Manipulate Collapsed Building Story.[/size]

Prophet TB Joshua says “I would be very happy if you can help me go & correct some of the things that is inside the paper”.

In the midst of the controversy surrounding the SCOAN building collapse, another new but damning information has popped up, presented by an investigative reporter, Nicholas Ibekwe.

Following last Friday’s tragic collapse of a building inside the Synagogue Church of God premises which killed 80 people, an audio tape has emerged and in it you can hear someone who sounds a whole lot like the leader of SCOAN Prophet TB Joshua offering N50,000 “fuel money” each to journalists who were invited to the church for a press briefing.



Ibekwe was amongst the reporters that visited the synagogue after the tragic incident that has taken over ninety lives so far.

He claims that T.B Joshua offered him and his colleagues N50.000 each when they visited the site. However, unlike the other reporters, Ibekwe refused the ‘brown envelope’ offered and has taken to Twitter to air his displeasure and disappointment over how the entire tragedy is being handled by SCOAN, the government and the press at large.

His tweets on the tragedy began on September the 14th. He first tweeted that reporters were not allowed at the site of the collapsed building.

He tweeted the proof of the ‘bribe’ offered to the journalists.

In the recording, when the reporters asked for an official statement, T.B Joshua is heard replying them, saying “which official statement you want me to give?” Towards the end of the recording, he is also heard asking them what they were going to report and they responded with laughter. It seemed like a light-hearted conversation between him and the reporters but in the end, no official press release was given.

The Synagogue Church has barred reporters from the site of the collapsed building.

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 14, 2014

Lagos State Commissioner for Physical Planning just arrived at the site of the collapsed building. He refused to talk to reporters — Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 14, 2014

Members of Synagogue Church are stopping reporters from doing our jobs here. What is the church hiding? — Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 14, 2014

Reporting of building collapse in the Nigerian media is too kind on TB Joshua. Could this be because his doles out cash daily to reporters?

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

Last Sunday, I was the only journalist who turned down TB Joshua’s N50,000 bribe offered to each reporters. — Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

The govt has a way of dealing with cases of collapse buildings. why are they not applying it in #synagogue‘s case. Why wait for documents?

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

@nicholasibekwe when a government is not committed to the truth, it commits itself to excuses. — J #BringBackOurGirls (@omojuwa) September 20, 2014

Those of you saying the govt is adopting tact, I say rubbish. This selective “tact”. Over 90 lives were destroyed & you’re asking 4 tact.

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

Nigerian journalists habitually collects money at press conferences and events. They call it “brown envelop”. I call it bribe! — Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

And for those of asking for prove. I’ve audio proof of TB Joshua telling reporters he’s N50,000 each from them.

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

This is not a Nigerian thing alone.This a a failure of politicians across the Africa. #Synagogue — Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

For instance, the South African ambassador drove tothe #Synagogue to console TB Joshua before Fashola and Goodluck and Lagos PDP.

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

TB Joshua also said he had received letters of condolence from different ambassadors. How did this man become mightier than the law? — Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

I’ve never been insulted like this all my life. For being brave to say the truth people have called me all kinds of names. Jeezzz #Synagogue

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

For those of you asking for proof of TB Joshua offering reporters N50,000, please don’t miss my next tweet. Same goes for those insulting me — Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

Audio Proof https:///WO2nQ9Iwnc via @audioboo #synagogue

— Nicholas Ibekwe (@nicholasibekwe) September 20, 2014

DOWNLOAD the recording below;

jjwaterfalls: I dnt understand, wat is d relationship between ICRC and boko haram.