fittty: Imagine she has never heard any of Dare's song and she got paid half a million dollars to co-host! And she had to youtube Dare to see what his music is about after the invite.... Now let me hear any one here say nigerian artists are known internationally... Nigeria music has a long way to go. Like I always say. Whether psquare sings with akon or rick ross, or dbanj gets signed to good music, the fact remains that our music can't fit into the international scene. Let's stop hyping our artist for what's not.. They are ALL locals!

In between why wasnt she asked what D'banj role in good music is?

Most revealing statement. searched on youtube to listen to his music. she doesn't know shyte about him or his music, yet he pays lots of cash money to bring her here. This is Kim kadarshian not a top singer.

Inferiority complex and love of oyibo is holding our people back

HNosegbe: A typical "establishment" candidate who was "selected" in order not to rock the boat, while untold acts corruption were perpetrated under his watch.

You're a good man, sir, but you won't be remembered as a great leader. The Second Republic needed a leader who would take the bull by the horns, take a tough stance against corruption and impunity, and clean up the system. Unfortunately you failed to make this happen.

The profligacy and mindless waste/stealing of public funds perpetrated by officials in your administration, coupled with NPN's blatant rigging of the 1983 elections, gave the military a perfect pretext to stage yet another coup which set us back by another couple of decades.

One can only hope that leaders of the present age have learnt from your mistakes.

Happy birthday sir.

This is a precise description of GEJ. So in other words Jonathan is Shagari 2.0

How did we get saddled with this kind of leaders?

envy not let me see road. haba, one small girl over all the actors and actresses in Naija. Anyway, big congrats to Rachel Mwanza. all the best

nobody from Nollywood? Genevive? Omotola? what happened to you guys?

A-40:
Whoa am I the only one that saw Harden give OKC the business??
Maybe if he played this well in the Finals the Thunder would have traded Ibaka instead of him. Still think it was a good move on both sides you have to wonder if Dwight is eyeing this Rockets team

The Lakers also crushed the Celts between

[b]Trade Deadline day! No major moves [/b]yet

"Yawn" It's past 3pm ET and nothing. Zilch! I say one of the worst trade deadline.

Jsmoove still with the Hawks.

stillwater: Here we go again with the bastardization of the word hypocrite.

Hehehe, I really would hate to have friends like some of you that shy away from the truth all in the bid not to sound 'hypocritical' or 'judgmental'. Good hustling on Kim's part and strategic PR stunts, but it is totally insane morally to invite someone like Kim to Nigeria for the progression of a concert. It only tells me where the current mentality of the Nigerian populace lie. Kim in Nigeria translates to who Nigerians especially the women worship and idolize! That is the truth! You call Nigeria, and all you here from ladies mouth is Kim, Kim, Kim. I applaud Dare's PR, and Kim's hustling! These people would feed you with what the populace wants!!!

The only hypocrisy here is a Nigerian girl cannot do half of what Kim has done and receive this much celebrity accolade. Why haven't we rolled out red carpets for Cossy Orjiakor? Is it because her 'status' has not reached or broken barriers in the international scene, or preferably she's not oyibo?

This is the truth. And because Cossy get krokro for yansh but Kim's yansh is white, clean, soft & fresh. Oyinbo worshiping is the fastest growing phenomenon in Naija. Kim carry LV bag, Naija woman, especially the Lekki crowd must carry their own too.

why are folks even analyzing this useless number? Once in a while this incompetent govt and their goons throw out numbers just for the heck of it. And to

Fact is the price of petrol, diesel, garri, rice, okada fare, bread (cassava & wheat), ponmo, dried fish, tomato etc is still rising. So what are we talking about here?

GEJ is just polluting this country with toxic fumes.

So Kim K visited Naija and your whole "cleb" people went gaga. Pan-oyinbo go kill Naija people.

The same Kim k that that has been shagged by all NBA & NFL players and then tossed over to Kanye. And there's even inquiry on this her pregnancy. No be Kanye get the belle oh. Kanye is gay and only shags her through the anus, so how did he give her belle. Humps should demand for a DNA test when she gives birth.

babaskool:
you are not getting the point are you there a lot of rich nigerians who live in places like lekki and hence live in mansions built in these areas someone bought his land only for half a million pounds your telling him he shud have bought a house in lekki u dey craze no offence are u comparing lekki to peckham....don't....i've lived in hackney east london for about 5 years i just laugh at these richard branson alan sugar guys that think they have money ........maybe they shud vist dangote website for which kind of truck driver job he has for them lolllllll

oh you were deported when your "aduro" expired. No wonder you sound so bitter. And I bet you hardly strayed outside your Hackney basement apartment throughout your unfortunate stay. Hemel Hempstead? Edgware? sound familiar? I didn't think so

This article is about Nigerians who studied in the U.K, not an "aduro" like you. Anyway have fun in your Lekki mansion.

babaskool:
DEAR FRIEND are u high or sumthing , a plot of land in lekki costs an average of 200 million naira dats half a million pounds which house or amenties in peckham was is worth a million pounds not to talk of some people house in lekki

Anyone paying that is brain dead. With that money (800,000 pounds) you can buy 2 houses in the U.K and lease it for monthly income (2,000 pounds each house, every month)

Redman44: How many British-born Nigerians are actually moving back to Nigeria? We need facts and hard figures on this forum. The post only talked about 4 people who decided to go and try their luck in Nigeria. And from what I grasped from the stroy, the four of them still want to come and spend their summers in the UK . I know 2 brothers who were born in the UK and attended the same Secondary school in Nigeria with me. They moved to the UK in the late 90's while I moved to Britain in 2007. One of them is back in Nigeria and has been staying there for close to 2 years now. What I am trying to say is British-born Nigerians know they have the freedom of movement due to their British Passports. A good number of them also hold Nigerian Passports, which they use to travel back to Nigeria without the need to apply for visas. We can't compare them to Nigerians in the UK who are Students, Work Permit holders, overstayers or downright illegal immigrants. These are the set of Nigerians who remain in Britain because they want to achieve something before returning home.

And what is there to really return to in Nigeria? How many people in Nigeria can look at you and give you common 5,000 Naira without getting something back from you? Some people talk about Nigeria as if it has the same economy like Germany or Canada. Nigeria cannot even compare with the UK even in its worst state. Many so called big guys in Nigeria are pretenders. People will do anything to look 'successful' in Nigeria. In the UK, no one really cares what you are putting on because anyone can get good clothing if they can get a job that guarantees them at least £200 a week. The UK is not a perfect place but if you're ready to work, you will get a job even if it is not the kind of job you want. I was surprised to discover that some councils in the UK e.g London Borough of Newham, provides free meals in schools for pupils and students who come from disadvantaged homes. How many Local or State Governments in Nigeria do this? Those that returned to Nigeria and got good jobs are in the minority. Our competitive nature as Nigerians is destroying our moral compass and is putting undue pressure on youths to do the wrong things in order to become wealthy. All of the 4 returnees in the story have UK Passports. What does that tell us ? This means they can easily return to the UK if things do not work out for them in Nigeria. If they really want to maintain their stand that they love Nigeria, they should renounce their British Citizenship. Anyone can succeed in Britain. It is just a matter of patience and time. Cheers.

Yes, hard number not anecdotes.

How many are going back? ten thousand every year? One irrefutable fact: For every one returning, lots more are applying everyday for U.K.visas.

This article will only generates the usual Naija vs. abroad yabbis; nothing more. By tomorrow everyone retreats to their bunkers and keep hustling for dollars, pounds, francs or Naira

So many funny comments to read. Do Gambians, Ghanaians,or Egyptian have this kind of arguments? or is this a uniquely Naija thing

Princek12:

I was thinking the same thing. It is due to incompetence.

and use of tokunbo machine. also they still mix tar with shovel

Billyonaire: This is another excuse to ban importation of cloths from China. E no go work. Fix Electricity so we can manufacture our cloths before banning importations.

The classic excuse. You can't sell stuff, blame the Chinese

so it's this ancient caterpillar they are using to build road? will the road be good? I tire o.

Naija and trickery sha. See this girl open thread to bring traffic to her yeye blog or site. don't know what to call it self. Nonesense!

all her rant is to bring folks in here so they can click on the link.

A-40:
Hehehe the ESPN wankfest on Lebron is starting to become unbearable! justified but unbearable

The biggest thing about Lebron for me is how multi-dimensional he is becoming! He's become a better shooter! His jump mechanics which used to be an achilles heel is now a strength! He's posting up and capitalizing on his size advantage and his basketball IQ seems to have gone up 20 ticks. Let's see if he can sustain it

more like Suffocating. but the dude is putting up insane numbers. He's making the game much easier for his team mates. This means they'll win it all,AGAIN in June. Can any team stand up to this Heat? I don't care anybody

Mynd_44: The Spurs rule!!!!!


Lakers drool

In regular season only. we'll see if they can handle OKC this year

ngozievergreen:
Its not true ,occam's razor is a medical terminology. U wan job me

It's a scientific principle and approach to problem solving.

Occam's razor "When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better".
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html

I believe a lot in this principle. I'm glad you like it too

Pathetic & cruel

I detect a slight Naija accent from the beater. Maybe some guy that's lived too long in the ghetto

Sincere 9gerian: A Nigerian is anyone, male or female, who has his or her origin in Nigeria. Are you a Nigerian? I am a Nigerian by birth. I expect that over 90% of persons who open this thread are Nigerians, mostly by birth.

Being a Nigerian means we have a responsibility towards Nigeria. If we want Nigeria to be great, and I expect every Nigerian to so want, then the responsibility is on you and I to do things that will make Nigeria great.

The so called advanced countries are where they are today due to the COLLECTIVE effort of their citizens, both leaders and followers. Majority of the citizens of those countries take RESPONSIBILITY for making their country great. It was the Ex-president of America, John F. Kennedy, who made the famous statement- "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country".

Yes, Nigeria may not have done much for most of us. Yes, our leaders, past and present, may have performed below expectation and in some cases woefully. I for instance hold the opinion that most of our founding fathers- including Awo, Zik and Ahmadu Bello- created the dis-unity and ethnoreliguous sentiments we see today. Yes, Nigeria in the past may have hurt many of us. For instance, I feel terribly hurt by the fact that Nigeria, between 1966 and 1970, supervised the massacre of over 50,000 easterners in a pogrom and another 2million in an avoidable civil war.

But not withstanding these mis-givings, Nigeria is our one and only country, and whatever we make of it affects you and I directly or indirectly.

Critical self introspection by every Nigerian, home and abroad, will reveal the connection between our individual BAD BEHAVIOUR and most of the problems plagueing our country. The BAD BEHAVIOUR of you and I will add up to destroy the country while good behaviour by the majority will add up to build the country. For instance, school teachers who encourage examination mal-practices should see the connection between their BAD BEHAVIOUR and multitude of un-employable graduates, high unemployment rate, morally bankrupt/incompetent leaders,etc. The medical practitioners should see the connection between their actions/inactions and low life expectancy in Nigeria (estimated to be 47yrs), high infant and maternal mortality rates,etc. The legal practitioners who unduly prolong court cases should see the connection between their antics and monumental corruption in the country. The parents who fail in giving their children proper upbringing are simply churning out more potential criminals and looters. The moderators on NL who speedily push negative news in Nigeria to the front page should see the damage they'r doing to the IMAGE of this country. And so on and so forth.

Consequently, every Nigerian should take RESPONSIBILITY for creating the great Nigeria we desire. As individuals, teachers, lecturers, legal practitioners, medical practitioners, parents, sports men/women, politicians, students, etc we should DO THE RIGHT THING. The professionals should give 100% at work place and the COMMON GOOD should be top priority. By so doing, you and I will be building the great Nigeria of our dreams

Free Nigerians from the yoke of oppression. Far too many people have internalized mediocrity and accepted the status quo. And when educated people continue to tell us that the ineptitude of the corrupt politicians is acceptable, we'll remain in same spot while other nations advance.

Poverty has destroyed the psyche and aspirations of too many. People no longer aspire to greatness but are contented to eek out a living in a rich and resourceful country. What an irony.

Senate president earns millions of dollars every year, yet the average 25 yr old has never earned a dime in his life.

This your preaching must start with the corrupt and nefarious gang in Abuja and other state capitals. Nuff said!

Maxymilliano:
Bros, what killed the sector is liberalization, and Nigeria joining the World Trade Organization, that's why there's influx of foreign product into markets of member countries, especially from Asia and which render local industries less productive and competitive...

Now you come full circle to my point. Lack of power meant they were producing at higher cost vs the Asians and were unable to compete. Liberalization is not a bad thing, but if you have supply bottlenecks in the economy (such as no power) your ability to compete will be severely constrained. All sectors of the economy was impacted by lack of power

Before spending money on revamping, they should do a deeper analysis on why the sector collapsed, what has changed since that time and what are the current/future opportunities.

We know the power situation has not improved significantly since 7 - 8 yrs ago. Let's stop doing things the wrong way. I also want the sector to be revamped but let's get it right.

eGuerrilla:

Off the top of my head, the main concerns are...

Vendor lock in - think about not being able to migrate your data when a cloud vendor fails to deliver on contractual obligations

Data Security - the Sony security breach which affected playstation users around the world springs to mind here

Performance (scalability) - thousands of Netflix users were left without a service during the recent festive period simply because the infrastructure could not scale, as a result of extra demand.

Proprietary APIs - a major disincentive

hmmmm so implication: don't use small players cos if they collapse your business grinds to a halt. And the bigger players charge too much

Proprietary APIs - a major disincentive not sure what you mean here. more info pls

orgasticdance: I worked briefly with a local angel investment group and one thing that struck me during my brief spell with the company was the limited scope for ecommerce growth in Nigeria.
Nairaland is arguably Nigeria's top social networking website yet it took the site more than 7 years to get to one million "registered" members ( a good fraction come from the diaspora by the way); for a country that has a population of 160 million, that is hugely disappointing when compared to social and gaming websites in china such as renren and qzone that have well over 100 million active members.

Relatively speaking, no internet company in Nigeria is going to crack a billion dollar valuation any time soon for the following reasons:

1. Uncle Sam is eating our lunch, take a look at the top rated websites in every country in the world, they are all american ( Facebook, Youtube, Google) except in china.
2. Most Nigerians do not care about the net: I can't begin to tell you the number of reasonably smart Nigerians who do not know or care about nairaland, dealdey, jobberman, and Iroko Tv, lindaikeji etc These websites to my mind enjoy a huge chunk of their patronage from Nigerians abroad ( I may be wrong)
3. Education standards are falling in Nigeria. You need a web savvy critical mass to market too, we don't have that yet ( Over half of China's 1 billion population use the internet in some way) You'll be hard pressed to get 10% within Nigeria. And there's also no innovation coming thru. All we do is consume. Do Nigerians have the wherewithal to build the next skype, or ebay to serve a world market?
4. Lack of patient capital. Nigerian net entrepreneurs need more patient capital, not just shrewd VC investors, but angel investors who can invest quality funding in the range of 100 to 500 million and give you free rein to run your company. We don't have those yet.
5 Then of course, the usual suspects: phcn, corruption, lack of broadband etc

I can attest to that. I was very surprised at the lack of awareness and knowledge about the web. Even some people working in the banks or service sector, do not get the business potential.

Though Nigeria has 44 million web users, my guess is majority spend less than an hour each day surfing. Bandwidth and connectivity issues still remain

eGuerrilla:

@.NET,

If you consider ROI 'a hole', then I suggest you invest more time researching current trends in this area.

I can state, without fear of contradiction, that most vendors aren't making any profit from their cloud offerings right now.


Source

The truth is, cloud technologies continue to pose a challenge for even the most established players in industry.
And as things stand, while some appear to be growing revenue by the week (I won't mention names), only a select few are actually making a profit.

Is data security the main issue here? why are more companies not using the service?

Maxymilliano:

Bros we are talking of a 'going concern' entity here, waiting for the government to fully fix the power sector before doing business is plain unseriousness on the path of the investor.

Despite the current harsh business climate, companies are still doing business in Nigeria, the government is working assiduously to ensure that power (gas inclusive) is fully restored.

Thanks

So what killed this sector and resulted in loss of nearly 800,000 jobs?

hoodboi: This is probably the best post I have ever seen on nairaland. I will be brief with my comments.

The problem most developers have in this country is that they are too profit driven, hardly would you see an programmer or web developer create something because they want to invent or create, they do it for profit. I totally agree with what someone said earlier abt going freemium before premium. We also have to learn that there is more to business than just creating a website, putting it online and hoping it would blow up. A website in the current world is thesame as any offline business, it takes planning, time, patience and the right mindset.

Jobberman is a total disappointment if you ask me. There is nothing special or different bout the site, they don't offer any feature that I can't get anywhere else. The only thing that keeps them afloat or distinct is the name. If I were to own jobberman or be given the opportunity at management, I would have copied the ebay model. I would not charge job seekers right off from the start, their charge would be left till when they either get the job or have been contacted by a company. I would also charge the company for posting the job and an extra charge once a candidate has been found and the job given to him. I would also provide a premium service to send the profile or cv of a job seeker directly to an employer which will be paid for by job seekers. Before all these charges are implemented, you need to know how much you wish to make on each deal / transaction that goes through your site, then split this into little affordable bits.

What really makes the difference btw successful .com companies and the not so succesful ones is the business model behind it. Ebay was not the first auction site but the business model behind it is a killer. The fees they also charge are so moderate that you wouldn't feel the pinch in ur pocket. We need to study the successful ones first and take after them. I see a lot of potential in companies like vconnect in the nearest future. The have a wonderful brand. And hopefully I see a lot of potential in my own think-house concepts. You guys should start hearing the name by the end of this year.

.. I believe I have said enough. I am not a professional consultant by the way but I do it freelance for several companies on IT matters. God bless us all and lead us aright.

Words of wisdom. The web is a channel to get customers to buy your stuff or use your service. No demand for the product, no business.

ngozievergreen:
leave dese ppl. Tell me d principle of d occam's razor.

Its about demand and supply. Do we have an export market for adire or ankara?

The Asians have made significant stride and cornered the juicy markets - North America & Europe

Maxymilliano: There is already a bail out plan for the textile industry by the government, after a recent interactive sessions with stake holders, it was discovered that the initial N180 billion bail out fund from the present government won't be adequate considering the long years of neglect in the sector.

It is good to know that somebody is making serious efforts rather than the usual rhetoric to revamping the textile industries.

Without power this revamping will just be money down the drain. Lack of power and over dependence on generator drove cost up significantly, so the sector became noncompetitive.

Fix the power sector first. period

PapaBrowne: Are you guys serious? After reading the posts on this thread, I heard to be sure that the article wasn't from 2010-2011.

Haba, there are many Nigerian online businesses doing good.

Wakanow has turnover running into billions of Naira yearly and sorry, they are a web based.

Travelstart is another travel web business and they are doing good too although they came from SA.

Dealdey is doing pretty ok.

IrokoTV is big time and they are rumoured to be worth over 30 million dollars. Plus they received funding to the tune of 8 million dollars.

Nairaland sef dey try, even though I think he is making much less now than previously.

But how can you guys forget two big game changers that arrived in 2012- KONGA and JUMIA(Kasuwa).
I have no idea how much they do in sales, but its obvious with the amount they spend on advertising, they intend to do sales running into billions yearly.

There are a host of others making money. But the draw bag usually is that people have become accustomed to the free web. Almost everything is free online(Facebook, Google search, Email and a host of other services). To get people to pay for the services you are offering, you have to provide a compelling solution to an existing need such that it beats flat out the solution provided by offline businesses.

At least you claim it's a rumour because I don't know what criteria was used in valuation. Anybody can claim anything until potential investors or share holders ask them to open the books.

How many people come to the site? How many of those are buying stuff or using the service? How much ad revenue is the site generating? What is potential future revenue stream? what assets do they have etc. You need this type of info before calculating valuation.

Olodostein: Of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise; where every Aki and Pawpaw is an importer of low standard clothes,etc.

We need to embrace our culture and clothing more. We also need creative fashion designers to set the trend for new designs.

Good sentiment but the business world is cold. Can we compete with the Asians in the world market? If we manufacture for Nigerian market, we should be looking at exporting too.

Years of bad decision in our manufacturing can't be undone so quickly. Can we get back even half of the jobs lost in 5 yrs? No

Fhemmmy:

And those are some of the experience that someone that has gone to the Polytechnic to study Office Admin might need. . . . I think you have seen too much of Nigerian students being maltreated that made you to not blv anymore in gaining experience by volunteering.
Chairman, there are some real volunteering, for example imagine an architect that just finish school and have no portfolio at all, and decided to go and volunteer to work with one of Nigeria's biggest architectural company (Dont know one), gain experience, and now on his CV he has such experience on it for a year, that will make companies' looking for experienced architect to give such a person a chance.
Not all volunteers do Suya errands . . . .

Why not put together your portfolio and approach the company that this is what you can do to help reduce costs, increase revenue or bring in customers. If they believe you can help make profit, they'll offer you an incentive. "Show me what you can do for me" is the mind set of most businesses.

Too many people approach this companies thinking they're are good Samaritans. Remember they have to set up an office space for you. Why? just so you can gain experience.

Fhemmmy:

We are not talking what the employer is gaining, for an unemployed person, there are few things that could have made the person not marketable, such as:
1. Lack of experience
2. Lack of knowledge of opened position
3. Not well networked
4. So much more.
By volunteering, you will be able to gain experience, yes, you are not getting paid, but experience will work for you later, you will be networked cos you are not staying at home doing nothing and your brain is doing nothing, but being busy while you work, though no pay, and you are networking while out of the house compared to when you home watching movies.
In all areas, nothing wrong in volunteering, even at the office, some people do it to get experience in other areas and be more marketable.
Never see it as slavery . . .

I'll talk about lack of experience:

Volunteering in an office by doing filing, paper work, researching online, creating documents with MS Word etc is not experience. As a volunteer this is the kind of task you're assigned to do. You end up everyday asking "Is there any job I can do?"

Real experience comes from working on a project, identifying problems, finding solutions, meeting with various stakeholders and ensuring the results are delivered. Most volunteering jobs may not expose you to this kind of experience