₦airaland Forum

CaptainAyub:
Replaced by a Yoruba

A Yoruba man who was already the 2nd in charge, and who did what the 2nd in charge usually does in situations like this. Would you rather Tinubu bypassed the normal chain of command simply for the sake of assuaging your tribalistic sensibilities, or are you simply unable to bear the thought of any Yoruba person being in charge of anything?

CameroonPepper:
To appoint his kinsman.

If that was Tinubu's aim, he could just have done so in the first place, rather than wasting time nominating Halima Shehu. Tinubu has nothing to gain by replacing her just 2 months into the role, as it gives others grounds to question his judgment. That he has gone ahead and done so suggests he felt the damage she was doing was so great that it was worth his risking any embarassment resulting from having to dismiss her.

Some of you really need a course in critical thinking skills.

Seun:
What alternative would you suggest?

Well, for one thing, you could make new members wait for a certain amount of time before they can actually post comments. Another useful tool would be to allow individual users to block comments from certain others - this reduces the incentive for notorious trolls to spout their usual nonsense, as they know most of their intended targets will never actually see what they write.

The only thing insisting on phone-numbers or other personally-idenfiable information would achieve would be to kill this site in one blow, by driving away anyone who cares about privacy.

YorubaSamurai:


I always wonder why


the rest continents are not as diversed as Africa... infact, Africa is more diverse than all other continents put together, and Nigeria alone is more diversed than Europe..


me think Africa diversity is the reason the continent is not developing as other continents, because the time we should use to develop, we spend it fighting tribal wars..


check all Africa Civil Wars, it is as a result of tribalism... even the Sudan war going on now


even if we are to split and create new African countries strictly on homogeneity (ask the case of Europe) we will end up with nothing less than 1000 countries


abi na for Africa God for curse the people building the Tower of Babel to start speaking different languages?

There are more "tribes" in Africa because Africa is where anatomically modern Homo sapiens (i.e. all living human beings) evolved. All non-Africans represent just a small handful of migrants from north-east Africa, and the further away from Africa you get, the lower the diversity in languages spoken. It's really as simple as that.

donwily:
I don't know about you, Mr. Seun but majority of Yoruba people are very tribalistic.
I have a Home in Ogun state and work in Lagos. So, I know what I'm talking about.

Irony of ironies, your brazen generalization here, based on your very limited (and no doubt highly prejudiced) personal experience, is the textbook definition of tribalism in action. How can you possibly know what tens of millions of strangers believe?

It is precisely because so many other commenters on here are like you, in being oblivious to their own biases, that I find it impossible to take all the accusations of "bias" against Mynd44 seriously. To paraphrase a common saying, "to the bigoted, equality in moderation feels like prejudice".

It takes either serious incompetence or outright malice for a "journalist" to take a fact which is essentially good news - Nigeria's farmers are now competitive in the international marketplace - and spin it as a negative development. To all those claiming that this is somehow a "terrible" thing (and blaming Tinubu for it), what happened to all of your usual moaning about Nigeria needing to develop an export-led economy? Now Nigerian farmers are exporting more, and still you complain!

rdokoye:
No nation has ever developed on foreign investment. Domestic investment is most important.

I guess someone should have shared your wisdom with the USA, Hong Kong and Singapore when they were in their rapid growth phases. The dumb things people say on this website!

bentenny:
The present way of supplying electricity will ensure that only few states and Abuja might likely achieve close to 18 hours power supply!

When electricity generation, transmission and distribution is decentralized to states,its an opportunity to ensure electricity is concentrated at the states not through a national grid!
This will first reduce transmission lines cost and ensure concentration on providing power to states by the state government!
Once there is constant electricity in those states while the maintenance and repair of their equipments is in their purview,consumers will pay for whatever is asked!
But if the electricity is not even close to inconsistent,how do you expect consumers to pay for services they don't get?

I am not against the decentralization of Nigeria's power infrastructure - in fact, I've argued for it on here in the past. While there are efficiency gains to be had from a single power grid spanning the entire country, better that there be multiple regional grids that are actively maintained and reliable than a "national" grid that is in constant disrepair.

That said, decentralization still doesn't address the main issue with Nigeria's power sector: the inability of GENCOs and DISCOs to charge enough to cover their costs. You say that "consumers will pay for whatever is asked", but that is simply not even close to being true. Nigerian consumers would rather put up with constant shortages than pay what it costs to produce something they desire - just look at the backlash to Tinubu's attempt to abolish the petrol subsidy (a move he was actually forced into by the country's impending default on its loan obligations). Is it any surprise, then, that no government has dared to allow the GENCOs and DISCOs to freely set their own rates, instead of having to come and beg for increases every few years?

Most Nigerians have no comprehension of opportunity costs, and see nothing wrong with having to buy "I pass my neighbor" generators to compliment the unreliable "cheap" power they are offered by private companies which can't even cover their costs, just as most Nigerians prefer "cheap" petrol that is constantly in short supply over market-priced fuel that leaves room for the government to invest in basics like good roads, education and basic health care. You can decentralize all you want, but this mentality will still be there wrecking any efforts whether at the state or even LGA level. Nigerians say they are willing to pay for reliable power, but few are ready to do so upfront, as if heavily indebted and unprofitable GENCOs and DISCOs are in any position to offer under-priced power indefinitely until Nigerians feel it is reliable enough to be worth paying for (which will in reality be "never" ).

Bottom line: decentralization would be helpful, but most of Nigeria's power sector problems would go away in a few months if the government

(i) permanently removed all the price controls on the GENCOs and DISCOs, instead of forcing them to beg annually for changes, and

(ii) abolished a true floating-rate exchange regime (making a parallel "black market" pointless). This would reassure foreign investors that they can repatriate their earnings as and when they see fit.

Seun:
I would like to address the allegations on Twitter about tribalism on Nairaland or that I am some kind of tribalist, because I was told that not addressing them means that they are true.

The more extreme variants of that claim are being pushed primarily by south-eastern tribalists who feel that south-western tribalists have the upper hand on Nairaland in their battles with each other.

Whenever they are banned after breaking rule 2 of Nairaland, they will go back to Twitter to lament about how Nairaland is against their tribe and how I'm personally working against them.

I urge you to disregard any accusation against me or against Nairaland if the accusers cannot prevent hard evidence to support their claims. These people make things up, and people just believe them.

For avoidance of doubt, I have always been a supporter and admirer of south-eastern people. I will never have any tribalistic bone in my body. I am a human who views people as humans first.

The micro-kernel of truth in the mountain of lies is that Nairaland is under-staffed. The staff I have do not moderate as efficiently as I want them to. They also struggle with following my instructions.

So if you go to Nairaland looking for tribalism, you will find it in certain areas, just as you will if you search Twitter for tribalism, because of people whose main business online is tribal trolling.

However, I want Nairaland to be better than Twitter. I want to improve the consistency of moderation on Nairaland. For this reason, I am in the process of recruiting more people to help.

I strongly suggest you augment the bolded with some investment in automated tools for triaging what moderators have to look at (as well as for easily viewing random samples of the kinds of judgment calls they are making). Not only is this more scalable in the long run, it would actually be better for your bottom line, as computer code is cheaper than any human moderator - even in a low-income country like Nigeria.

bentenny:
A bill has been signed into law giving states the power and authorisation to generate,transmit and distribute electricity both in areas covered by the national grid and areas not covered by the national grid!
States in the SS and SE should be at the forefront to ensure electricity is provided in their domain due to the availability of gas and coal in those states!

All of this irrelevant, as long as the price controls on electricity charges aren't eliminated. Having coal or gas in your state doesn't magically abolish the laws of economics: as long as electricity is sold for less than it costs to produce, there will be zero incentive to provide it, and zero profits that can be channelled into infrastructure upkeep, let alone to invest in improvements.

Nairalanders can bleat about "Fashola" or "corruption" to their heart's content, but the reason why Nigeria's electricity supply has stagnated for more than 30 years is the same one why a nation which has been in OPEC for 50 years has no working government-run refineries: Nigerians repeatedly refuse to accept the true price of what things cost to produce.

Blue3k:
The only thing I personally despise about how the NBS presents date is that it's hardly presented on proportional or per capita basis. The curious have to follow up behind them figure out context missing. What percentage of the state has access to the internet is more useful to know. They know better as statisticians but they're lazy.

I think the big difficulty there is that Nigeria hasn't had a single trustworthy census since 1963, so there's no good basis on which to make per-capita calculations - just look at all the preceding argumentation on this one topic about population figures. One can't blame the NBS for wishing to stick to verifiable facts, given how quick so many are to scream "bias" or "incompetence" whenever the numbers the NBS puts out don't match their personal desires.

At any rate, it's easy enough to plug the raw NBS numbers into a spreadsheet and calculate per-capita values based on whatever population estimates one would prefer to use.

Bulldozer90:
training and means indeed. You forgot to add politics and skewed methodology.

And where's your evidence for this, other than that your ego feels bruised? Like I said, I'm certain you don't have the first clue about statistics, so on what basis are we to believe there's a "skewed methodology", other than your personal axiom that your tribe must be first in everything?

Bulldozer90:
Whenever you see data sourced from national bureau of statistics please don't take it seriously

And what are we supposed to take more seriously than data collected by officials with the training, authority and means to collect it, some nonsense made up by marginal online rags pandering to your tribalistic prejudices? I doubt you could even tell a median from a mean or a mode, let alone possess enough statistical knowledge to evaluate the quality of the work done by the NBS: for you and your ilk, any data which doesn't cater to that huge tribal chip on your shoulder is by definition "untrustworthy" ...

KwuoteYourFada:
No it indicates
SW are educated and unemployed

If high internet usage indicates unemployment, I guess that makes countries like Norway, Switzerland and South Korea economic basketcases full of idle internet users? The ridiculous lies some of you will tell yourselves to soothe your fragile egos.

SoNature:
Oga, stop defending stupidity. That's exactly what kept this country a shithole. I didn't write the report that said the eastern railway route was the most lucrative. We are talking about railways here, not airports.

Where's the report in which the bolded above is stated? Are we simply supposed to take your word for it, given that you've already been caught in a lie through your use of a Congolese picture to paint the SW in a negative light?

Sensible leaders think like businessmen; they invest in areas where they will generate income for the country. In Nigeria, people in government come with ethnic agenda, making the country a big joke.

Here the joke is on you, as you are so clearly incapable of taking your own advice, being as blinded by ethnocentrism as you are. There is no universe in which it makes more financial sense to spend on railways in the backwater that is the SE, while neglecting the SW which contains 2/3 of the entirety of Nigeria's non-oil economy. Only an economically illiterate tribalist would suggest otherwise, or be ignorant of the fact that the very first part of the railway system built by the British on Nigeria's founding was the very same Lagos-Ibadan route you're trying to badmouth. Clearly they understood economic realities which escape your bigoted little mind.

coputa:
Stop this your gutter theory,Ibo's are the backbone of economic activities in nearly all major cities in Nigeria and beyond.

If they close shop,the economy of that place is at a stand still.

I was in Abidjan when Obasanjo visited as a president then,all Igbos close shop to welcome him,do yo know that the whole city was in disarray that day.

Yes, Igbos are the secret ingredient behind the prosperity of Stockholm, Vienna, Zurich, Sydney, Seoul and Tokyo. Without the Igbo presence, Beijing, Atlanta and Sao Paolo would all fall into ruin, while Tel Aviv and Shanghai would lie desolate! They must be special magical beings whose mere presence in a city is what determines the course of its economy - one wonders how cities anywhere in the world managed to thrive in the 5,000 years between the founding of Uruk in Mesopotamia and Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther's writing of the first Igbo book in 1857 ...

kettykin:
I hav traveled a good part of the world, it is winter in London, people keep indoors during winter, my family is in united states and are celebrating a low key Xmas, parts of the US is having einter

Nonsense. I've lived for years at a stretch in America and the UK, which is why I know for a fact that what you celebrate as something "special" about Igbos in Lagos is just a commonplace of any major city over the Christmas period. It will still be winter in 5 days when New York and London have their New Year parades, and yet somehow both cities will spring fully back to life then without any help from Igbos acting as secret Santa's Little Helpers spreading jollity across the land. There's absolutely nothing special about big cities closing down when everybody is on holiday and everything is shut down.

kettykin:
You still don't get it, the bubble left Lagos and is presently in the east, Lagos presently is in a hibernation mode while the east is on hyperactive mode.

The same country, the same season but different modes

Sure, and that explains why hardly a person is to be found walking the streets of London, even in the West End - because all Igbos that give the city its energy have gone home. You must never have step foot out of Nigeria's borders to believe there's anything special about the Igbo presence in Lagos.

What a lot of rubbish! London, Paris and Berlin also turn into ghost towns over the exact same period. Is that because all their Igbos went home as well? Or is it due to the simple reason that all businesses and commercial operations shut up shop over the Christmas period, and people take the time to meet with their friends and relatives?

The constant attempt to push this ridiculous narrative about Lagos being "dead" without Igbos smacks of a gigantic inferiority complex. The city would still look "dead" over Christmas even if not a single Igbo left town for the holidays - why would anyone be out on the streets with all shops and offices shut?

Omoluabi16:
But these things you mention are not peculiar to nairaland alone. Even on FB,People have been bullied as a result of what they put on their page? (Image,videos, e.t.c). Generally, all forms of SM are toxic. More people, more madness. Vice versa.

Which is why sites like Facebook have automated moderation as a first line of defense, instead of solely relying on fallible human moderators as Nairaland does. I have seen with my own eyes how some moderators on here have allowed their kinsmen to get away with the most egregiously inflammatory behavior, while handing out instant bans to even the mildest attempts to put the trolls in check. Unless Seun is ready to hire 10x as many moderators, all of whom must be of non-Nigerian background (to avoid tribalistic "moderation" ), there is simply no way the current setup can do a decent job.

ganye1:
Condemnation of atrocities being committed by the isareli state is not wrong at all. We cannot keep mute when the state of Israel attacks children, women, hospitals, schools, residential buildings.

It is perfectly possible to condemn actions of the Israeli state without automatically turning it into an attack on Jews in general. Indeed, there are many Jews perfectly willing to criticise the actions of Netanyahu's government, some of them even living in Israel themselves. Besides, not every Jew is an Israeli (and not every Israeli is Jewish) - in fact, most aren't (more Jews live in the USA than in Israel).

GloriousGbola:
Its more than that imho

People who take the internet too personal hold Seun responsible for the tribalism, red pillism, political divisions etc.

Meanwhile Nairaland is really just a mirror of what Nigeria really is. In the early days it was abroadians, upper middle class and people with good jobs who had internet and therefore access to Nairaland. There was a different level of discourse, but it was not truly representative of Nigeria. Now that internet is cheap, the masses have access and we are seeing how majority of Nigerians think and reason.

And this here is exactly the problem with mistaking the number of page-views a website gets with its commercial value, which is what seems to have happened with Nairaland. Not only does the much wider demographic you mention lead to a debasement in the quality of discussions held on the site, but it also makes the place a lot less attractive to would-be advertisers. Why would any business with a decent reputation want to cheapen its brand by putting ads on a site where half-educated tribalists spew venom at each other all day, especially seeing as virtually none of them have any disposable income beyond whatever they can scrape by to pay the data fees on their cheap phones? Who would like to be associated with motor park touts, foul-mouthed market women and petty traders who fill their empty lives by flinging tribalist abuse at strangers?

Serious moderation (preferably of an at least semi-automated variety) would certainly slash the number of posts and views Nairaland gets, but if this means less participation by low-IQ commenters with nothing to contribute but abuse, this would be a benefit rather than a loss, not just for the reputation of the site but for its attractiveness as a forum for advertising. The kinds of people who have the disposable income to make meaningful purchases also tend to be too busy earning their income to waste hours every day exchanging tribalistic jabs and posting disgusting images.

airsaylongcome:
Now that I think about it again, could it be as a result of anti-Israel posts?

Simply making anti-Israel posts wouldn't have been enough, given how unpopular Israel is across much of the world (particularly in majority Muslim countries). It would have had to be something as serious as either glorifying terrorism or outright inciting others to violence, and if Israel was involved, it would only be because those who object to genocidal anti-semitism are more likely to have the will and know-how to report the issue to hosting services, unlike when Nigerians act in the same manner towards each other.

motionarena:
So cloudflare has mind to take you down for days.
Despite money you pay to them.

Which just goes to show how the bad the reported behavior must been for a hosting service to discard a loyal paying customer of 9 years. Whatever it was must have been far, far worse than the garden variety tribalistic insults that are Nairaland's bread and butter.

airsaylongcome:
It's comments like this that got the website taken down in the first place. I know your defense will be "I did not mention any name". But oyibo people are not fools or hypocrites like us. More tribalistic comments like this will surely have the website taken down again by its new host

As odious as the tribalism on this site can get, even the most blatantly tribalistic insults wouldn't have been even close to being enough to trigger a site takedown by a hosting service. Even sites which host much more intense manifestations of hatred are allowed to stay up undisturbed as long as they don't cross certain lines, such as calls for violence, propagandizing on behalf of proscribed terrorist groups, hosting images of gore (e.g. the sorts of images associated with IPOB killings), or "doxxing" and other forms of harassment of particular individuals. I'm sure that if Seun ever feels inclined to go into the details, it will become obvious that something of the sort of behavior I mentioned was to blame.

What is clear from all of this is, at least to me, is that Seun's unwillingness to invest in improving the technology behind this website is now coming back to bite him. As I've said numerous times, relying solely on manual moderation isn't scalable, nor can human moderators be relied upon to be objective, especially when it comes to comments involving their own tribes. Automated content moderation is something any big site has to have to keep the trolls in line, but Seun seems uninterested in either adding it himself or bringing onboard others who can help him implement it, which is now he is now needing to find new permanent hosting in a hurry.

goodnessme1:
If yorubas don't hate him,why did they gang up against him in 2015?

All your nonsensical response proves is that you couple a ridiculous persecution-complex with a runaway sense of entitlement. It takes a truly twisted worldview to think it is voters who owe a politician their devotion, rather than it being the other way around. Anybody who considers it a "gang up" for disenchanted voters to look elsewhere has no understanding whatsoever of how democracy works.

If GEJ had wanted to keep Yoruba votes, perhaps he should have tried harder to cater to their demands during his 4 years in office. Only foöls and dim-witted tribalists throw away their votes in support of candidates who can't be bothered to keep them in mind. They voted him into office in 2011, yet he couldn't even be bothered to pretend he cared how they felt once he'd won, and the natural consequences followed thereafter. That you and your kin vote blindly along tribal and religious lines for uninterested, incompetent leaders like Obi (who Anambrans spent so many years wailing about, only to turn around and treat him like a messiah in 2023) is your problem, not that of Yorubas who rationally exercised their electoral franchise. It is your people who need to learn how the political game is played, so they can come out from the political irrelevance to which their blind tribalism has consigned them. Acting as if voters owe any politician anything is the mark of a slave, not a self-respecting citizen.

goodnessme1:
GEJ didn't abandon it.



He simply didn't start the project on time, that's the only area he failed.



He was busy first trying to please Northerners and Yorubas that hate him.

If Yorubas "hated" him as you say, how then did he win their vote in 2011? Good luck with that ridiculous victim-complex of yours.

Cruise777:
https://businessandmaritimewestafrica.com/volpi-italian-co-owner-of-intels-seeks-to-oust-wale-tinubu-from-oando/

Perhaps you need remedial lessons in English comprehension, because the article you link to does not support the notion that Bola Tinubu has any share of ownership in Intels. What it does say is that Gabriele Volpi, who owns shares in Intels, also owns shares in Oando, a completely separate corporate entity. Furthermore, it is in Oando that Wale Tinubu (not Bola Ahmed Tinubu) is also a shareholder, and the article makes no claim that Wale also has any interest in Intels whatsoever. Furthermore, Wale Tinubu is not the same person as the sitting President - he is the President's nephew, not even his son. Simply being related to Tinubu is not a criminal offense, nor does it bar one from having a career in business.

The long and short of it is that you have provided absolutely zero evidence for your insinuations about Tinubu's relationship with Intels. All you've shown is that you have a poor grasp of the English language alongside a willingness to peddle any calumny against a man you hate for other (almost certainly tribalistic) reasons.

Cruise777:




Atiku already cashed out $100 million

Tinubu owns it with Volpi

I laugh when people talk about Tinubu stealing their Money, especially IPOB youth

Well Mr Tinubu's networth and Investment portfolio is so wide you are going to loose count

Shares in Microsoft, CocaCola, Manchester Football club , INTELS Logistics, OANDO group,

Even Allison Madueke, when she had problem and needed to sell her London mansion, Seyi Tinubu's company bought it cheaply

Funny enough no stake in his name, all are in a holdings held by trustees

What's really funny is that you can claim with such confidence that Tinubu is really a secret co-owner of Intels, even though you yourself admit that there is "no stake in his name". So what exactly is your evidence, then, that Tinubu is a secret owner? What privileged information do you have to bring to bear? Do you have access to some secret cache of corporate documents that lay out the truth or something?