₦airaland Forum

GAR3TH: No your wrong, the south west was part of the Royal Niger Company after the British captured the area. The Royal Niger Company was later merge with the Niger Coast Protectorate to form the Southern Nigeria Protectorate in 1900. The colony of lagos only included the lagos area and not the entire SW.

Aigbofa: You don't know what you are talking about. There was the colony of Lagos and protectorate of Southern Nigeria.

GAR3TH: I thought the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria did include the SW expect for Lagos. The Colony of Lagos was not the entire SW but on the city of Lagos and the area around it.

ilugunboy: The revisionists are back !!

Katsumoto: There was no war; just the miseducation of Biafrans and the attempts by others to educate them.

Trust me, Ndigbo isn't ready for another war.

New business district, Yujiapu, Tianjin

https://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/61901000/jpg/_61901701_manhattan_afp.jpg


Perhaps you can copy a small English town, but how about Manhattan?

If Chinese developers have their way, the name Yujiapu will be synonymous with international finance a decade from now.

They say they are laying the foundations of the world's biggest financial zone in the muck of the northern port city of Tianjin.

However, the Reuters news agency suggests that they had to scale back their ambition recently to achieving something short of "the next Shanghai".

Tianjin now styles itself as China's home of private equity, offering firms generous tax breaks to set up there.

Meanwhile, the city looks set for a glut of prime office space.

"Tianjin... will soon have more prime office space than will be filled in a quarter-century at the current absorption rate," says business magazine Forbes.

Thames Town, Shanghai

https://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/61901000/jpg/_61901692_thamestown_getty.jpg

Photographers who visit this imitation English town generally come not to capture decay but newlyweds, posing in front of mock-Tudor buildings and red phone boxes.

The Shanghai suburb boasts a market square, a castle, a neo-gothic church, cobbled streets, a pub, a chip shop, Georgian-style houses and statues of well-known English figures, such as Winston Churchill, James Bond and Harry Potter.

As a backdrop, Thames Town is a hit with the wedding industry, but that is about it.

"The city is a virtual ghost town, with empty shops and unused roads," according to an article in Business Insider.

Yet perhaps not all is lost. Apartments have reportedly been sold, to buyers who want them as investments and second homes.

The proof of the developers' pudding may lie in news that the construction of another mock English town is being planned near Beijing.

"Four miles of polluted rivers running through 1,000 acres of blighted semi-rural land will be restored and landscaped into scenic standards becoming of the English countryside,"

Wonderland Amusement Park, Nankou Town, Changping

https://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/61901000/jpg/_61901694_rtr2v5et.jpg

The Disneyesque castle and medieval ramparts of this theme park north of Beijing, conceived nearly 20 years ago, lie abandoned. Local farmers grow crops among the empty buildings.

In the mid-1990s, developers had promised to build the largest amusement park in Asia, but the project got mothballed over a land rights dispute.

The site does in fact attract visitors, according to locals quoted by Chinese media, but hardly the sort the developers had in mind - they are drawing students, photographers and artists from Beijing, apparently, in search of a "ruin culture".

New South China Mall, Dongguang, Guangdong

https://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/61966000/jpg/_61966726_newmall.jpg

The distinction of being the world's biggest ghost mall, or emptiest shopping centre, may belong to this vast complex on the outskirts of Dongguang, a city of 10 million.

You may think the mall would be booming, with a population of that size, but the vast majority of its 1,500 stores have been empty since it was finished in 2005.

It has been hurt by poor transport infrastructure. As one blogger puts it, "unfortunately it was built in the middle of nowhere".

When Australian broadcaster SBS visited, they found a solitary toyshop owner who waits days at a time to sell a toy.

It is not as though the developers did not try. They threw in a canal, windmills and replicas of the Campanile from St Mark's Square in Venice and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The mall's website says it is "bound to be a miracle of commercial history".

"It's a building where you can see that there was some activity earlier - though very little - but it's like a ghost town," writes Netherlands-based blogger Mathilde Teuben, who visited two years ago.

"The very few shops that are there are deserted of customers. It was also funny to see some of the promotional posters for the mall which mostly depicted happy Caucasian children."

New city of Chenggong, Yunnan

https://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/61901000/jpg/_61901528_chenggong.jpg

"In Chenggong, there are more than 100,000 new apartments with no occupants," according to the World Bank's Holly Krambeck.
Designed as an overspill point for nearby Kunming, a city of nearly six-and-a-half million, Chenggong began to take shape in 2003.

High-rise apartment blocks have mushroomed but today it is still largely deserted after failed attempts by the authorities to attract new residents.

Matteo Damiani, an Italian journalist who worked for seven years in Kunming, has visited Chenggong several times, photographing empty tower blocks that loom over gigantic plazas, peopled only by enormous works of art.

He found a small community of students, workers and security guards but nobody else.

"The suburbs and even the city centre are empty," he says. "You can find a big stadium, shopping malls and hundreds of buildings finished but abandoned."

There is even an area for luxury villas that is totally abandoned, he adds.

It is said to be one of the biggest ghost cities in Asia.

As growth slows, China's huge investment in infrastructure is looking ever harder to sustain, leaving a string of ambitious projects - towns, shopping malls and even a theme park - empty and forlorn.

"We have spoken a lot about these ghost towns in Ireland and Spain recently [but China] is Ireland and Spain on steroids," says Kevin Doran, a senior investment fund manager at Brown Shipley in the UK.

Investment in infrastructure accounts for much of China's GDP - the country is said to have built the equivalent of Rome every two months in the past decade. And with such a large pool of labour, it is harder to put the brakes on when growth slows and supply outstrips demand.

"You have got seven to eight million people entering the workforce in China every single year, so you have to give them something to do in order to retain the legitimacy of the government," says Doran.

"Maybe 10 or 15 years ago they were doing things that made sense - roads, rail, power stations etc - but they have now got to the point where it's investment for investment's sake."

Goddess12: What if Banjo had been a double agent planted by SW to screw you guys up, war is not for the fainthearted, in war there are no rules, anything goes.

2mch: The revision continues. Abeg, i wan die of laughter from this post. Make una no kill peson for NL. rotflmao! Where is kobojunkie to come an supply the laughing stone. Who again were they going to send towards the SW? A yoruba soldier that knows the terrain and the language of course. Banjo knew that if he did not peacefully ask, him and his ancestors plus generations would have been dealt with. He is not an Igbo afterall. He understood that while choosing alliances, respect for his people and culture was ultimate. Igbo's failed in their unplanned war. just deal with it and move on. Igbo's were fighting to secede, why advance to the SW to rescue them? I thought secession was removal, and not rule over the country. So why the interest in the seat of power?

ACM10: You've started to inundate us with your lies again.
Ojukwu's letter to Banjo. . .Busted as forgery.
Ojukwu's letter to Awolowo. . . Busted as forgery.
Yoruba enlisted to fight against the Igbos after the midwest invsion. . . Busted as lie.
Now, Ojukwu charged landing fees to aid agencies.
How long will u continue to disturb our eardrums with your cacophony of lies?
Pls can u name the aid agency involved and when it happens? Don't waste your time with the works of hack writers.

Eziachi: Its not a new revelation, as many of us then knew the truth from the day one.
I had told you guys here on Nairaland that Biafran forces original intention of pushing to Lagos was because of the expectant Yoruba declaration of their own republic.
That we will be around to help in the event of attack against them by the northerners, but just like Aburi, they changed their mind without notice. 1966 Boys acted because of what they perceived unjust imprisonment of Awolowo and the deep rooted corruption plantation of Balewa's govt, but when it went wrong, it became an Igbo coup, even when the facts said otherwise.

All these are now in the past and the future is what is important but the fact remained that you cannot cover the truth forever.

Katsumoto: What you heard is irrelevant; otherwise, the courts would accept hearsay.

Are you writing a book for adults, kids, or martians? You want to write a credible book and quote a newspaper? You are free to do that but you can't hinge all of your argument on that alone.

Katsumoto: Can you shed some light on the pact Awo had with Biafra?

In the time I have spent on NL, I am yet to meet a Biafran who has articulated this debate about Awo having a pact and backing that position with some facts.

When are you guys going to put up or shut up? Who was present at this pact? Where was it held? What day?

Awo and Ojukwu met and their conversation was recorded; there was no pact.

Katsumoto: Can you at least present something to support your position other than 'things that went on behind closed doors'?

Why should Awo have said 'you must fight Biafrans and call upon me when you are ready? Did Awo tell you in May 1967 he was taking sides? The man argued for peace, at least thats whats contained in his speeches and efforts. You guys need to leave all this 'bullshit assumptions' in your village squares. Stop trying to interprete Awo's mind, you are not mind readers. His language is very clear.

Katsumoto: Fani-Kayode was irrelevant from Jan 1966; he was not privy to any information of that sort. So we are supposed to take the words of a returnee junkie as gospel just because he has provided 'some truths', your words, which feeds into your predisposed but unproven views?

Can any of you shed light on this phantom agreement Awo had with Biafra?

Katsumoto: It is only on NL that you will see a motley crue of ignorant, disingenuous, and downright foolish personas who will feed on the words of a drug-user like Fani-Kayode to malign the person of the GREAT Obafemi Awolowo.

1. How relevant is the individual
Who precisely is Fani-Kayode? Who appointed him a spokesman of the Yoruba? The only relevance Fani-Kayode derives, are from his former godfather, the gorilla of Owu and his father who was expelled from AG and too irrelevant to be killed by the Jan 66 plotters. . Has Fani-Kayode won an election any where in Nigeria? Was Fani-Kayode not a junkie when he was returned to Nigeria?

2. Motive
Fani-Kayode’s father was expelled from Awo’s AG and would fall into obscurity after Jan 1966

3. Knowledge
Was Fani-Kayode present when Gowon promised Awo presidency? Would Fani-Kayode and the resident idiots on NL have us believe that Gowon and Murtala were foolish enough to believe that Awo would fall for that cheap bait or that Awo was daft enough to fall for the said bait?

In any case, Fani-Kayode showcases the gaps in his history by stating that the 3rd Marine Commando was 98% Yoruba. The 3MC was formed from the Lagos Garrison Office (LGO) and that didn’t even have a Yoruba majority.

PhysicsQED: If one washed up, loudmouthed, "attack dog" (as Fani Kayode was described) non-Igbo controversial politician from the Midwest who served in some administration comes out and starts making claims about this or that or putting forward his perspective on history, I'm sure Obiagu will be ecstatic and do a backflip right there on the spot , as if that would be anything other than one man's opinion.