₦airaland Forum

A government that does not know what its doing. I can bet as soon as elections are over, petrol will go back to 100 naira.

lakhadimar:
The Battle that would seal the doom of Boko Haram is the Battle of Gwoza and Bama. As long as those two axis are still in the complete control of Boko Haram then the figt is still very very very far from over.

Intelligence report indicates that Imam Abubakar Shekau is hiding somewhere inside the caves of the Gwoza hills or the Mandara mountains

The COAS also said this in Baga. Gwoza is the battle royale. Twice the Nigerian army have been beaten back from Bama. Bama has to fall before Gwoza is approached. It seems to me that the frontline is currently just outside Damboa.
Bama has always been problematic, and thats why the victorious Konduga soldiers have not been pushing forward to Bama.
Yesterday, I heard Gombi was attacked. This is very strange but it also means that the vast border Cameroon side is porous and likely escape route for BH.

dejt4u:
read her profile on wikipedia

She has no wiki profile. Stop giving props to a woman who is not important.

Henry120:
They recently captured malam fotori and damasak. malamfotori the same town these clowns claimed to have captured in january.


Particularly striking is the convenience with which the western media seems to leave out that piece of information.

As long as it doesn't fit into their orchestrated narrative of the Nigerian military been corrupt, under-equipped and incompetent, it isn't a good piece of news.


Nigerian troops in green, chadian troops in desert camouflage, but some how, it is the Nigerians that are under-equipped.

Chad cannot be more equipped than Nigeria. Unfortunate that the head is rotten in Nigeria, otherwise our PR would be top notch.

lakhadimar:
The Tchadians liberted Dikwa; the Nigerian army instructed them to retreat and not to advance further; when the Tchadians retreated, Boko Haram came back to Dikwa and massacred the remaining civilians therein so the Tchadians had to 're-liberate' Dikwa again.

'This news was suppresed and under reported'

Interesting point of view/news. I never knew Dikwa was recaptured by BH. Anyways, the news with these Chadians is exaggerated. Dikwa is not as fierce as Baga, Hong, Mubi, Michika, Monguno etc which our army had been sweeting on daily basis.
Im against GEJ, but I know and appreciate the efforts of our soldiers.
Look at Cameroun, see how they were making mouth months ago. Their BIR soldiers were hyped beyond belief. They even claimed to have carried out airstrikes in Konduga. Look at them today. BH is showing them pepper.

lol. Kemi Omololu Olunloyo and who gave her Dr. title? PDP and their daily jokes sha.

Im sorry I dont believe these Chadian armies anymore. For over a month now, they've be capturing and recapturing Dikwa. Their claims are actually over exaggerated.
Taking one town, and helping police borders does not warrant this level of noise.

Dr Lamido Sanusi, who had been awarded “Central Banker of the Year 2010″ by the Financial Times Banker magazine (an award which cited his “radical anti-corruption” campaign) discovered what he figured was a US$20-bn black hole in Nigeria’s national finances.

He wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan, detailing the mechanisms by which be believed an astronomical fraud had been committed. He calculated that over the course of a year and a half, a billion dollars a month had been siphoned off national oil revenues. These “leakages” were, Dr Sanusi told the president, “unsustainable”.

For his trouble, the president first suspended, then fired him, accusing his central bank governor of “financial recklessness”.

Last month, Dr Sanusi, a blue-blooded descendent of the Kano royal line, was reincarnated as the northern kingdom’s new emir. He swapped his pin-striped suit for flowing robes and a turban. Sitting in his throne room the day after his coronation (pictured below), HRH Muhammad Sanusi II told Channel 4 News exactly how he believed the alleged fraud had been perpetrated. He sticks by all his allegations.

“At the heart of the problem, to my mind,” he said, “is that[b] the entire political system is held hostage by a small group of vested interests.”[/b]

His was an almost identical assessment to that offered by Stanley in the slum on Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Street, where most people I spoke to knew all about the former central bank governor’s staggering allegations. But Dr Ngozi herself dismisses his claim. “It just so happens that on this that he was not correct,” she said. Last year, she claimed more than US$10bn was “missing”.

The Nigerian government commissioned an independent “forensic audit” to determine the truth, but has chosen only to publish edited highlights of the final report – and many Nigerians still smell a rat.

- See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/miller-on-foreign-affairs/grand-theft-nigeria/1463#sthash.Mn777TLs.dpuf

“The scale of corruption by this country’s political elite is breaking people,” he said. “Some see it as the dispensing of patronage, so they can survive. But let’s say it straight. It is theft. Theft with a sense of entitlement.”

“Nigeria,” he added, “is a country where you can disappear an elephant into the pocket of a shirt.”

Byword for corruption?
A couple of days later, I was interviewing Nigeria’s flamboyant finance minister. Inevitably, before long, our conversation homed in on the C-word. “Your country has become a byword for corruption,” I said.

“I reject this completely!” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, shouted indignantly at me across the six-foot gap between our two armchairs in her ministerial office, strewn with photographs of herself with world leaders past and present.

“This country has a tendency for people to throw out wild numbers and because of the perception of corruption, people believe a lot of this. Nigeria is not a lawless country where you just lob accusations.”

Dr Ngozi, who earned her doctorate from MIT and who has spent years as a managing director of the World Bank, has a street named after her in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. Half way along it, there’s a slum called Utako, whose residents live hand-to-mouth. Few have jobs; the rat-infested, malarial shanty lacks all basic services.

“The masses are suffering because of the greediness of our leaders,” said Stanley, a man in his late 20s, and one of the millions of Nigerians who do actually believe the “wild numbers” but are powerless in their poverty to hold their leaders to account.

“They are so corrupt don’t care about the masses,” he said. “All they care about is how to embezzle our money. If you look around this place, there is no sanitation, no water, no electricity. They don’t live in this environment.”

Licence to loot
Nigeria now ranks as Africa’s largest economy, powered by vast oil reserves. Average incomes have doubled since 2010, yet a third of Nigeria’s people live on less than one pound a day.

For decades, it has been alleged that corrupt politicians were skimming huge sums off the national oil revenues – hundreds of billions of dollars according to the UN. Most of Nigeria’s 500 languages don’t even have words for “million”, let alone “billion”, but people know the score. Power is perceived as the licence to loot.

Until last year, these “wild numbers” were indeed just “thrown around,” as the finance minister put it. Then, finally, a whistle-blower emerged who put some flesh on the bones. The numbers were indeed wild. But he came with some pedigree. The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria was no ordinary whistle-blower.

- See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/miller-on-foreign-affairs/grand-theft-nigeria/1463#sthash.Mn777TLs.dpuf

Two huge issues loom large over Nigeria’s hard-fought presidential election this month: Boko Haram and corruption. Of the two, the breathtaking scale of official corruption is blighting the lives of more Nigerians than even the deadly insurgency.

A former Nigerian government minister has claimed that his civil servants offered him a 20 per cent slice off his department’s multi-billion dollar budget, assuring him they could bury their tracks. Their expectation, he said, was that they too would be rewarded with a generous tranche of the loot.

The senior politician, who cannot be named for his own safety, alleged that he had been approached shortly after his appointment to cabinet, while staying in a hotel on a high-profile foreign trip. He told Channel 4 News that he refused the offer, telling his civil servants that he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

- See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/miller-on-foreign-affairs/grand-theft-nigeria/1463#sthash.Mn777TLs.dpuf

ISpiksDaTroof:
You are smart!

There's a William Reed of the Black Press International, yet I don't see one for the Black Press Foundation.

Either way, the article seems like a paid advertorial for Jonathan and PDP.

That is key to the scam. If there is no Black Press Foundation, then no one can be held responsible, while at the same time buying credence.
Like you said, the whole article stinks of Aso Rock media team.

Who is William Reed (the writter)? He claims to be the president of the 'Black Press Foundation' . No info about this 'foundation' on google. The only info about this 'foundation' is this article by WT.
I honestly think this is another 'Wendel Simlinn*' orchestrated by the desperate team GEJ.
This was also an opinion piece (i.e written by members of the public and sent to the editor to consider for publishing). Could this have been written by Abati and sent in using a non existent name William Reed, and a non existent foundation called Black Press foundation?
Investigation begins!

Written by Abati's former coursemate. I smell Abati's handout all over the piece.

Bayswater:
You need to go read more about Sambisa forest lol

Sambisa forest cuts across at least 3 states and countries. Boko haram used to hide in some parts of it, I guess that means Boko haram controls it.

It is not a piece of inhabited land, you need to do your research well before coming here to state bollocks as facts.

You guys just keep disappointing me with your usual shallow analysis. You are always very eager to score cheap points

What is the size of Sambisa forest? What is the size of Belgium?
As we speak today, BH controls Gwoza and Bama. Add the size of those places to that of Sambisa. No one is talking whether the land is inhabited or not. The fact is that GEJ lost the lands to the terrorists. Simple

Twitter is very different from live TV debates. You can post a lie on twitter and get million retweets because you are in control of the lie. On televised national debates, you cannot hide under retweets and favourites. People will see you for who you are.
Ayedee's empty grandstanding, pointing at the camera like Shekau, unease and pseudo-violent disposition completely debased him for the world to see. Akin made sure he wound him up to get him to show his true self.

I said this in the original thread. I wouldnt want an oba pointing the bottom of his stick to me.

This was the high point of the debate. This was the point when ayedee finally lost his cool.
Akin said Boko Haram now controls about 30,000km of land mass in Nigeria. Ayedee flipped and almost went violent. This led to Akin calling on the program editor to get the police ready because he feared he could be punched.

SO, did Akin lie?

Size of Sambisa forest = 23 000 sq miles = 37 000 sq Km.
Size of Belgium = 30.510 sq Km.
Verdict: Ayedee lost his cool because he was being trounced on facts. I am also checking other facts stated by Akin, and 4 hours after watching the video, I am yet to find a fact he misplaced.
Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPxyOqRyvbo

References:
1. http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Belgium.html
2. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/nigerian-girls-may-be-held-countrys-evil-forest-n99306

Akin be like: If you look back eh...I go fact-slap you again.

Bayswater:
How? Cos he did not allow Akin's huge lie go un-rebutted?

What was the huge lie? Was that not the same thing said by Doyin Okupe on Hardtalk? Whats the area of Sambisa forest?
Anyways, Im thoroughly enjoying rewinding that last part of the debate. The way ayedee was being sent back to the stone age with an impressive calmness is fun!

ibnakeem:
For those who said akin was a tout, vanguard newspaper has this for you

Akin vs Ayedee was like Barca vs Shooting stars. You stop counting scores after 1st half.
Akin 'murdered' Ayedee, and brought out his intestines and hearts. Akin the multi tasker.

OMG! Ayedee lost it on national TV. APC won hands down. If I'm to score it, I will say 3-1 to APC. The 3rd part was won by PDP.
Ayedee is an unintelligent bluff. Has no facts, and easily worked up.
Kudos to APC team for being very calm all through. PDP guys played easily into APC hands.

I wont comment until I watch the full video.

Videos uploaded already! Enjoy!
1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLrhTH0oZA

2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-BATbabW3c

3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNG_dxzPcNU
4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPxyOqRyvbo

am sorry for Jonathan. This is a curse! His desperation will finish him.

GEJ has never looked comfy as a president from day 1. He has tried to act the role, but his demeanor always give him away. Cue his reactions to national and worldwide events.

Its a long read, but it is a very honest assessment of the state of the economy at this period. It is also non-partisan, and I hope people can educate themselves with this.
GEJ's myth of economic achievement laid bare by a foreign investor.

As World’s Hottest Economy Unravels, Nigerians Feel the Squeeze
Boko Haram and the oil collapse prove a nasty mix for a rising African power

In a four-day sweep through Nigeria early last year, Aberdeen Asset Management’s Kevin Daly detected trouble. Yes, the country was a rising African power and yes, it had become the world’s fastest-growing major economy, but things weren’t quite right. An Islamic insurgency was heating up in the north and there were early signs that a nasty presidential campaign was brewing.
Then financial disaster struck.

Oil, the lifeblood of the country, collapsed in a breath-taking free fall. Daly had seen enough. By November, he had sold all of his Nigerian government bonds.
Back in Lagos again last month for a fresh look, Daly found a country ravaged by crisis from all sides: the bloody clashes with Boko Haram insurgents had intensified; the violence had spurred authorities to postpone elections the president was in danger of losing; and the plunge in oil prices had depleted government coffers and triggered back-to-back currency devaluations. Nigeria’s benchmark equity gauge is the second-worst performer in the world this year — only war-torn Ukraine’s has fallen more — and the government’s local bonds have posted the biggest losses in emerging markets.
“Nigeria is very high risk right now,” Daly said after returning to London, where he oversees $13 billion of emerging-market bonds at Aberdeen, Europe’s largest publicly traded fund manager. His only investments left in the country are bank bonds.
Africa’s ‘Capital’
That Daly, 54, has soured to such an extent on the West African nation is telling in of itself. He considers himself a long-term Nigeria bull, attracted by the economic growth potential, booming population and natural resources. (In addition to being rich in oil, the country’s savannas and mountains are fertile agricultural land and are lined with metals and precious stones.) Nigeria will become, he said, “the capital” of sub-Saharan Africa, if not all of Africa. “There’s significant upside if Nigeria can address a lot of its shortfalls.”
Right now, the shortfalls are all that most investors see.
The Top Five Frontier Markets to Invest In
The currency, the naira, has slumped almost 20 percent over the past six months, touching a record low of 206 per dollar in February. Even when compared with other oil-producing nations, the declines are stark: No other major exporter’s currency is down as much in 2015. Foreign investors in naira-denominated bonds have been saddled with losses of 9 percent this year once they convert their money back into dollars.
After burning through $5 billion of international reserves in the fourth quarter, policy makers tried a more heavy-handed tack to arrest the naira’s slide, imposing restrictions on Nigerians’ purchases of dollars. Those measures throttled trading in the currency market, with daily volumes shrinking to as little as $10 million a day. Before December, they regularly topped $300 million.
9.9% Growth
The economy is starting to sputter.
In January, the International Monetary Fund cut its 2015 forecast for Nigerian growth to 4.8 percent. That may not seem like much of a slowdown, but compare it to the country’s average annual expansion over the past 15 years: 9.9 percent. Nigeria has a predominantly poor, fast-growing population (the United Nations sees it climbing to the third-biggest in the world by 2050) that is consuming ever-greater quantities of food staples, clothing and whatever else can be found on store shelves. Those dynamics have fed the country’s spectacular growth rates — figures not even matched by China.


Nigeria’s gross domestic product swelled to over $520 billion, edging out South Africa for the top spot on the continent, after government statisticians overhauled the data last year to include more industries.
‘Big Prize’
South African executives have started taking notice.
Miles Dally, chief executive officer of RCL Foods Ltd., said he’s looking for an opportunity to expand in Nigeria after bigger rival Tiger Brands Ltd. bought a flour mill company in 2012. Dally summed up his view of the country like this: “It’s a very challenging place to do business” but it’s also “the big prize” in Africa.
A key part of that challenge — perhaps bigger than dealing with constant power outages and rampant corruption — is doing business in Boko Haram-controlled areas. Tiger Brands has found that out, citing the violence as one of the reasons it’s struggled to turn a profit so far.
Boko Haram
Aberdeen’s Daly also got a first-hand feel for the tension during his travels last year. As he arrived in the capital city of Abuja in central Nigeria, authorities were on high alert.
In a single day last year, Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates to western education is a sin, killed 75 people commuting into Abuja and abducted 276 school girls, most of whom are still missing. The group’s targeting of the capital is part of a broader ratcheting up of the insurgency that claimed at least 1,600 lives in January and more than 4,700 in 2014, twice the toll of 2013.
Earlier this year, in a market in Boko Haram’s stronghold of northeastern Nigeria, a girl who onlookers described as about 10 years old detonated explosives hidden under her veil, killing herself and some 20 other people. Days earlier, in a succession of attacks on towns in the north, Boko Haram militants killed hundreds of residents. Troops from Chad, Cameroon and Niger, as well as Nigeria, are fighting the rebels.
To understand Boko Haram’s growth, just take a good look at how impoverished many parts of the country are.
“When you have a system in which 90 percent lives in poverty, 70 percent in absolute poverty, you’re likely to have one problem or another,” Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the central bank governor, said during a meeting in Abuja with Daly weeks before he was driven out of his post.
Now the emir of Kano, the main city in northern Nigeria, Sanusi has been focused on initiatives to alleviate poverty.
Tomato Farms
One of those involves tomatoes.
Sanusi found they were mostly being left to rot in the fields, while imports of tomato paste — a staple ingredient for suya meat sticks flavored with hot chili and ground peanuts and sold on every main street — cost $360 million a year. A lack of storage facilities or food processors meant that tomato farmers would take whatever price they could get — or leave the fruit to decay.
Sanusi teamed up with industrialist Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man and a fellow Kano native, to build a $25 million tomato paste factory that bought tomatoes at a fixed price from 8,000 farmers. With a contracted income, farmers were able to borrow to buy their seeds.
The factory’s output enables Nigeria to cut tomato paste imports by a third, Sanusi says, and ease the deprivation that has made the north fertile ground for Boko Haram recruiters.
National Elections
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan ousted Sanusi from the governor’s job after the central bank urged the president’s office to investigate the disappearance of tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue. Sanusi was never charged with any wrongdoing.
“The episode should remind investors that Nigeria’s country risk is high,” Daly says.
Jonathan is now scrambling to keep his own job.
Nigeria May Stabilize After Vote: Aberdeen's Daly
Polls show the vote pitting him against former military leader Muhammadu Buhari will be the tightest since the end of army rule in Nigeria 16 years ago. Electoral officials pushed back the vote to March 28 from its originally scheduled date of Feb. 14 after Jonathan’s security adviser told them the military needed more time to quell the insurgency and guarantee people’s safety as they vote.
Yusuf Family
Jonathan’s finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, shares Sanusi’s obsession with fighting poverty. For her, credit — or the lack thereof in Nigeria — is key.
In a sitdown last year in Lagos, Africa’s biggest city, Okonjo-Iweala said she had been studying the finances of a couple, Alhaji Kamoru Yusuf and his wife, Bolanle, to try to understand what’s right and wrong with the economy. The two had taken out short-term loans to progress from a roof-nail business to building Nigeria’s first cold-roll steel mill in an effort to compete with Chinese exporters.
Like tomato paste and fuel, steel is a natural for Nigeria, where the government says more than 3 billion metric tons of iron ore lie untapped. Alhaji and Bolanle succeeded, Okonjo-Iweala says, but she wants to make it easier for others to follow suit.
What’s missing in Nigeria, she says, is a state-backed development bank along the lines of Germany’s KfW or Brazil’s BNDES. “You can’t expect people to borrow short term — for three years — to invest in a 15-year endeavor,” she says.
Lagos Lagoon Slum Shows Challenge Facing Nigeria
Booming Nollywood
In December, she took her biggest step yet to addressing that need, securing a $500 million financial package from the African Development Bank to support the establishment of a similar institution. The lender, to be called the Development Bank of Nigeria, will also seek funding from international investors looking to make a positive “social impact.” Being accountable to these backers will help to prevent the bank from becoming another corruptible institution in a country ranked among the world’s 36 worst for graft by Transparency International, according to Okonjo-Iweala.
Peering into the future — beyond telecommunications, manufacturing and construction — Okonjo-Iweala sees growth coming from non-oil minerals yet to be exploited, everything from copper to tantalite.
Then there’s Nigeria’s best-loved industry: Nollywood.
Measured by the number of movies made per year (not box office earnings), Nigeria’s film industry ranks second only to India’s Bollywood, with Hollywood trailing a distant third.
“It’s amazing to me,” Okonjo-Iweala says. "When I’m in the Caribbean, people say: 'Are you Nigerian? We’ve been watching your movies.' The potential to service the black diaspora and beyond is amazing; we’ve only just begun to plumb that. Nigeria has the potential to be another California."
Billionaire Dangote
If one man is the face of Nigerian business, it’s Dangote.
From his headquarters on Lagos Island, he presides over a vast enterprise stretching from cement to telecommunications. Even after the fallout from sinking oil prices cut his personal fortune almost in half, he still has a net worth of $13 billion.
His next venture: Oil refining. Unfazed by the 47 percent selloff in crude, Dangote is betting on Nigeria’s future energy needs by investing $9 billion in a refinery and petrochemical plant in the Lagos area.
The business opportunity is created by Nigerian neglect. Most of the crude destined for the local market today takes a circuitous route to get there. Pumped in the Niger River delta in the south and offshore in the Gulf of Guinea, it is then shipped abroad to be refined before returning to Nigeria as fuel. The country has four refineries, but pipeline theft, fires and neglect have reduced their output to a fifth of capacity.
‘The Devil’
Devakumar Edwin, an executive director at Dangote, said the refinery will produce 400,000 barrels a day initially and eventually reach a million barrels, which would make it the second-biggest refinery in the world.
With daily production of about 2 million barrels a day, oil generates 90 percent of Nigeria’s hard-currency earnings. About 20 percent of that output comes from smaller drillers — those pumping up to 100,000 barrels.
Guys like Kola Karim.
He says that his company, Shoreline Natural Resources Ltd., is getting squeezed hard by the combination of plunging prices and a pickup in oil theft along the delta.
Many smaller drillers obtained financing based on a price of $70 a barrel, leaving them “under water” at current prices of about $60, according to Karim, the chief executive officer at Shoreline.
He expects some will merge in a bid to cut costs and stay in business. “It’s difficult in a down market when you’re a small producer trying to weather the storm alone,” Karim said.
And then he captured the mood of an entire nation when summing up his company’s struggles.
“You face the devil on all sides.”
(Parts of this article were adapted from Frontier: Exploring the Top Ten Emerging Markets of Tomorrow (Wiley/Bloomberg Press, February 2015)).
—With assistance by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo in Abuja, Paul Wallace in Lagos and Ye Xie in New York.

lalasticlala:
APC Supporters make una Bring better source ooo

I seriously doubt your pix. This is not Heathrow.

Thats not how BA's lounge at Heathrow T4 looks. Dont feed these PDP goons.

Why should ANY political party interfere with the election? Leave INEC to conduct the elections.

16 years in Power has made PDP finally disconnect with Nigerians. Do they think Nigerians are so lame to ignore a GEJ who harbours corruption and focus on a Tinubu that has been discharged by a court.

barcanista:
That's À long story my guy. But I can't support a party thÀt is shouting change but refuses to embrÀce democratic change. The change is merÉ rhetoric.

Ás for the "so-called" unrealistic debate, its funny because not only that it lacks direction, I can't debate with anybody that has been insulting me and spamming me. Hence, I totally ignored.

You must be suffering from egolomania. You're barcanista, a username on nairaland. Nothing more. It is the same ego that made you think you were indispensible, thus asking for security votes from fellow nairalanders.