₦airaland Forum

What a ridiculous non-story! These foreign airlines provided services which Nigerians voluntarily decided to purchase, so what exactly is wrong with them taking home the funds they earned? Were you expecting them to leave their funds stuck in Nigeria indefinitely? You might as well ask them to cease serving Nigeria altogether at that rate - nobody is going to put money into another country if they have no means of ever getting anything back after doing so.

If Nigerians seem to be charged more for flights than people living in other countries, the right thing to do is not to blame profit-seeking private enterprises for doing what they were established to do, but to look at why conditions in Nigeria might be enabling them to make such extraordinary profits in this particular market (if they are indeed doing so, as revenue is not the same as profit). Does Nigeria's airline regulator impose extraordinary burdens that justify charging more? Is there something about the way we treat foreign airlines which makes them demand higher profits to justify the risk of doing business here? Are our busiest airports capacity-constrained? Have the landing slots in them been efficiently allocated according to demand, rather than through the age-old Nigerian favoritism for a few well-connected groups?

There could be any number of reasons why these price disparities exist, but determining what they are requires careful, thorough research, instead of flying off the handle in an entitled rage with nonsensical complaints about foreign businesses who used funds they raised abroad to provide services now deciding to take their earnings back to the countries where they raised the money to pay for the planes, pilots and other staff who made the services possible. Anyone who doesn't like this is free to patronise domestic alternatives or simply stay in Nigeria. Nobody is being forced at gunpoint to fly abroad on a foreign airline.

ehikwe22:
You're just so ignorant. I made my fortune from trading the financial market. I'm not a novice. I understand these market. I understand these things. Those things you call private are not private. They're not independent. All international bodies and regulatory bodies are an arm of the western powers.

Any dimwit can make grandiose, fact-free claims like yours. Go ahead, Mr high-flying financier, tell us what the "S" and "P" in "S&P" stand for, if you have the slightest clue. Share with us who their chief competitors are, and enlighten us on their equivalent rating grades. While you're at it, why don't you share with us which of them mostly recently downgraded a leading OECD country, and what the market reaction to said downgrade was? I'm sure you'll dash off the answers to all these questions with ease, being the financial wizard you claim to be ...

ehikwe22:
handwork of IMF and World bank. If you refuse to follow their recommendations, they put you on negative, but if you follow their recommendations, they put you on positive immediately. But time has shown that their recommendations has never been in Africa's interest in the long run.

If you can't even tell the difference between international financial bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, and privately run, profit-seeking credit agencies like S&P, you have no business prattling on and on about any (utterly imaginary) conspiracy to keep Africa down.

CodeTemplar:
it is funny how you admire how I dismantle you silly propaganda and call me intelligent on other accounts but login into omohayek to mask your insecurities.

Snort -- f*** off, troll. I've wasted enough energy on your îdiocy for one day.

CodeTemplar:
the rants of a deeply uninformed agent toward the very person that can school the entire ratfaced nation/people about cyber security or spywares like Pegasus. For a start, search about Pegasus here on NL and see some of the users who first sensitized others about its existence and use, maybe you can recognise a particular one.

I don't need pegasus for your type. Simple ML and AI can root out your real life identity for me.

Go ahead - I dare you. If dem born your mama well, go ahead and reveal my identity! As if you had even the first clue what "simple ML and AI" were, other than buzzwords you hear in the news.

For your info, no bastard tech or subpoena can unravel mine. I don't know about ratfaced morons though.

Tsk, tsk, I know you suffer from serious self-loathing, but there's no need to use such harsh language about yourself! It's bad enough as it is that you're as thick as a brick but spew meaningless diarrhea like a leaky anus.

Now f**k off my mentions and go back to playing in the gutter where you belong.

PoliteActivist:
Bottom line is, the populace support the coup plotters. Once that is the case there's NOTHING anybody can do.. that's the end of the matter!

Yes, they "support the coup plotters", just like Nigerians did in January 1966, and again in 1983, and just as other brain-dead Africans wanting saviors in khaki did when the likes of Samuel Doe, Mobutu, Bokassa, Eyadema, Abacha and many, many others did at the very beginning of their coups. The story of intellectually-impaired, poorly-educated African hordes supporting power-hungry soldiers is the story of the proverbial dog returning to its own vomit.

Kukutente23:
You're still repeating the same thing. You need to be aware that military junta do not come into govt with a promise of economic prosperity. That's why I told you to look at Nigeria's history with military takeovers. The catchphrase is usually to restore public order and confidence, ensure the nation does not disintegrate and most importantly, stamp out corruption.

That doesn't matter. If people are suddenly starving and can see that the blame lies directly with the junta they were cheering just weeks before, then either the junta has to make concessions, or it has to start shooting and killing the very masses who were cheering it on shortly before. That destroys the last iota of legitimacy it can make any claim to, and sets the ground up for mass resistance. No regime can survive for long without the backing of at least a certain fraction of its population.

All these economic niceties does not cut any ice with military regimes. All they have to do is blame any economic malady on the previous govt and their western imperialist friends. Or you think it's only politicians like Buhari that have monopoly of blaming previous govts?

You write as if others lack the brains you have to see blame-shifting and excuse-making for what it is.

The fact is they have an alternate route that's as old as the continent itself. So just as I gave the example of Mali, the no-fly zone and economic blockade will have little to no effect.

And here is the central point I made, which you are still trying to deny: it absolutely will have a devastating economic impact. This is simply indisputable by anyone with even a cursory understanding of how transport costs affect the pricing of goods. Low-volume routes like the Sahara are only really viable for high-value items like gold, diamonds and other luxuries, not for low-value but high-volume goods that ordinary people depend on.

The Mali junta has been there since 2021 and recently shifted elections to Feb 2024. Similar sanctions were proffered against them with little or no effect.

All of this is irrelevant to the original claim you made, which was utterly wrong, as I've explained above. Just admit as much and move on.

CodeTemplar:
half smartness.

This is a faceless social media platform unlike some other ones.

Not that I've ever doubted that you're a low-IQ troll not usually worth even responding to, but thanks for providing this spectacular example of your inanity for all to see. Do you think the servers hosting this site can't be seized under subpoena by officials, that your IP address can't then be determined, and that the email address you registered with can't be discovered? Do you think whoever your email provider is will hesitate to sell your privacy out as soon as government officials come asking for it? And you must be utterly clueless about security matters if you think American and Israeli security firms aren't busy hawking toolkits for governments to ferret out their critics by hacking their phones and computers throughout Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

Stick to spewing your semi-literate gibberish to someone more appreciative of your basement-level intellect.

EBUBS:
He didn't stop the citizens from using social media. Just using it as a means to spread fake news or information they, the government see as harmful.

And what kind of news do you imagine an unelected regime of gunmen will declare to be "fake news" or "harmful", if not the very kind that reflects unfavourably on them? How slow upstairs can you be not to see this is how every single dictatorial regime justifies stifling all dissent and criticism?

E better make military take over Nigeria sef

This statement dispels any lingering doubt that you are seriously intellectually handicapped.

DonBenny77:
Na wetin Nigeria need now
I prefer a young vibrant military dictator to this liveless thing we have now

Yes, young and vibrant like Idi Amin, who can have you chopped up and put in a freezer ready for his next big meal, as soon as you open your gob to make the slightest criticism of his insane, "vibrant" directives.

Beverlyjean:
Those that are attacking the coup plotters with this decision... is there any difference between them and ur leaders... can u express urself on social media without putting urself at risk of being arrested by DSS ... selective arrest .... youths were killed for protesting bad governance in Nigeria.....

And yet here you are doing the very same thing you claim you aren't allowed to do on Nigerian social media, without worrying in the slightest about any possible action by the DSS. It's amazing how so many of you enemies of democracy run your mouths without stopping to think about how you contradict yourselves.

Kukutente23:
Are you saying Niger can't trade through Libya or that it's nonsensical in terms of how economical it is?

I'm saying that the costs of overland transport via the Sahara desert, through a Libya still in a civil war, is so much higher than it would be through Nigeria, Benin and Cameroon, that the economic impact of ECOWAS sanctions would still be devastating. Sanctions don't have to be 100% watertight to be effective.

You should know, even from Nigeria's experience that the last thing on the mind of military junta is economic expediency. Note that they've already closed the borders before Ecowas announced its sanctions. That should tell you how they think and act. It's about survival of the regime not economic buoyancy.

Yes, I never argued otherwise. The point still remains: the ECOWAS sanctions will have a significant impact on the great mass of Niger's citizens, even those who were ignorantly jubilating at the news of the coup. It may not affect the junta directly, at least at first, but it will make it much harder for the coup-plotters to distract the populace with cheap "anti-corruption" stunts when ordinary people suddenly find that their standard of living has suddenly taken a gigantic dive. That is the real point of the sanctions - to undermine whatever popular support the coup plotters might hope to enjoy.

gidgiddy:
The unfortunate thing is that people like you still dont understand that Nigeria is a hegemony. You want Nigeria restructured, I want Nigeria restructured, but it will never happen because the current system is to the liking of some feudalsts based up North

The difference between you and I is that while you will always accept the wishes of those who dont want Nigeria restructured, I want to get out of Nigeria if they dont agree, and they will never agree

No, the difference between is us that I understand that the right (and frankly, only realistic) way to get that restructuring is to get my representatives to push for it in the NASS, not by leaving them undisturbed while terrorising my neighbors and relatives with unending "sit at home" exercises and "unknown gunmen" who go around kidnapping, killing and cannibalising the innocent. Not only does such rampaging do nothing to build support outside one's own region for one's goals, it also destroys what support there is within it, so how does it help anything or anyone other than the criminally-inclined, who now get to parade themselves as "freedom fighters" while denying ordinary people freedom of movement?

Kukutente23:
Really? A military junta will fold up because of cost of transportation.
Yet I'm the ignorant one.
Go and study how Mali played out before you start throwing up conjectures

Knocking down straw men can make even the most intellectually limited feel they've accomplished something. I never claimed the junta will fold for any such reason, I was pointing out the utter inanity of your claim that an ECOWAS economic blockade would have little effect because Niger could simply trade through Libya, which is economic nonsense of the first order.

gidgiddy:
Where do you thinks a constitution derives its legitimacy from? It has to be something agreed to by the people. The 1999 constitution is a fraud because it was imposed by the military, nobody agreed to it

The ethnic nationalities who exist within the British colonial contraption called Nigeria must come together, decide the terms on which they engage with one another, the rules by which they live together

This is the first time I have ever seen you say something sensible, and something I happen to completely agree with. As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day ...

In any case, this is the right kind of starting point from which to decide whether Nigeria is worth keeping as a state, and if so, what shape that state that ought to take. For this contraption cooked up by British adventurers to have any staying power, it needs to be transformed into a union whose members have voluntarily opted into it, not the current default of "it was always like this, therefore it must always be so".

43Ronin:
There nothing illegal about it.

There's nothing illegal about soldiers betraying their oath to respect their country's constitution, and overthrowing the nation's elected leaders at gunpoint? If that isn't "illegal" in your book, I doubt anything is ...

African politicians need the army to check them since they(politicians) are all corrupt.

And who keeps the army in check if it too turns out to be corrupt? I repeat, Mobutu, Bokassa, Idi Amin, Babangida, Abacha and Museveni were all military men, and all turned out to be far worse than the civilians they overthrew in the name of "fighting corruption". Keep on pretending that wearing khaki automatically confers good moral character.

If Nigeria politicians were afraid of the army our country and economy would be way better.

Yes, because Nigeria was a paradise during the years of Decree No. 4, the killing of Dele Giwa and Abacha's reign of terror, right?

Nigeria and Ecowas should not interfer with another country's sovereignty. period.

Based on what legal principle? If soldiers can suddenly decide to break their own nation's laws to install themselves in power, what legal right do they have to insist outsiders can't do the same to them?

Again and again I see the same thing from all of you defending this act of insubordination and seditious treason: you have zero understanding of the idea of universal moral principles (i.e. principles that you continue to respect even when they don't work in your personal favor), zero knowledge of even the recent history of your own country, and zero appreciation of the fact that wearing a military uniform doesn't confer good character any more than claiming to be a "prophet" stops you from cheating your followers and sleeping with their wives. You all want to have good governance delivered on a platter to you without having to do the work of keeping your elected leaders accountable through your own civic activity, so you are eager to swallow any old nonsense any bunch of power-hungry soldiers offers you about "fighting corruption", even though the track record of soldiers in Africa has been far worse than that of even the greediest civilians.

Kukutente23:
Don't be ignorant. Libya borders Niger in the North. Mali, another military led country to the west. So how will ecowas blockade which is majorly to the south be effective?
Niger is not "landlocked" like you think. They have a lot of friendly neighbours outside Ecowas.
How effective was Ecowas sanctions on Mali?

Wow, it's breathtaking to see such astonishing ignorance on display. How much do you think it costs to transport a ton of cargo by sea compared to going overland, especially where there are no reliable rail links, and where's there's also a pesky little obstacle called the Sahara Desert to worry about?

I won't even get started on how you have been so busy agitating for your kinsman's "mandate" to rule a Nigeria you so clearly hate ...

kettykin:
Niger republic should call Nigeria bluff , Nigeria is presently in worse state with uncontrollably inflation. They should use other flight routes and also impose a no fly zone over its territory by Nigeria.

There is nothing the Nigeria military can go in a battle field besides starvation, blockade and sabotage of farm land . Rally other francophone countries to your side

Here you are openly calling for coup plotters in a foreign country to act against Nigeria's interests, after you've been pretending for several weeks now to be "patriotically" fighting for Peter Obi's supposedly "stolen mandate". It's good to see you so clearly expose yourself for what any thinking person would already recognise you to be, a "fair weather patriot" who is only waving the flag to advance a tribal power-grab: illegal seizures of power obviously don't bother you, only that they might thwart your selfish tribalistic agenda.

IamtheTruth1:
You just dey gibberish. Go and look at Countries with strict sanctions against corruption. Don’t even reference the military because they are also corrupt.


If you are against them then you must be stupid also. Until African countries impose strong rules on corruption then Africa will raise again.

Imagine someone stupid enough to accuse others of "gibberish" when the very same idiocy he's championing has been tried and failed multiple times in his own country! Were Babangida and Abacha civilians? Did they not claim to be dealing harshly with "corruption"? How about Idi Amin? Or Mobutu? Or Jean Bedel Bokassa? Where is the prosperity and incorruptibility Museveni has brought to Uganda 36 years after his coup? Weren't these all military men promising the exact same thing lazy, simple-minded characters like you were hoping would magically bring about peace and prosperity without any effort on your part? After so many such failures in your own country and its neighbors, you still have the nerve to insist that this recipe for failure will do the trick, displaying your utter ignorance of both history and human nature. Anyone who expects men who take power through the gun to hold themselves accountable is an îmbecile of the lowest sort.

The saying goes that madness consists of trying the same thing over and over again, yet still expecting it to work despite and endless series of failures. By that criterion you and your ilk belong in padded cells where your raging insanity can be kept in check (hopefully with a hefty dose of anti-psychotics).

Deeprooted:
The situation of democracy in most African countries have not been to Carter for the masses

And you think a soldier no one elected, who no one dares criticise, and who can't be removed from office by anyone other than another coup plotter, is somehow the person to "carter" [sic] for the masses? Care to tell us all how well that worked under the dictators who ruined Nigeria between 1983 and 1997? You must not have lived through those years to believe military men have anything to offer "the masses" other than capricious, unaccountable misrule.

Deeprooted:
You obviously lack adequate knowledge of international politics.

The France and USA you mentioned will do everything possible to bring back the Democratically elected president because he's a puppet. This is the same thing the AU is calling for

"Puppet" is all unprincipled worshippers of autocracy like you can cry, as if democratically-elected countries had no shared concerns about seeing yet another democracy overthrown by seditious goons in uniform. What else but "puppets" of the Wagner Group can one call the likes of similar coup-plotters in places like Mali?

IamtheTruth1:
Why dem no stop the one for Mail and Guinea ? As Tinubu enter him give matching orders na.


Who else saw their Finance Minister crying after given 24hrs to give account of Money looted or face firing squad.

As if you too wouldn't be crying if a bunch of thugs with guns aimed at your head were clearly planning to offer you up to the mob as a scapegoat to ease their way into power, regardless of what you might or might not have done! This sort of cheap propaganda has been the stock-in-trade of coup plotters right since the 1960s (e.g. Nzeogwu), yet they continue to roll it out, as they know there are masses of gullible, disgruntled souls who are ignorant of history and ready to eat it up.

What exactly do you suppose will happen if the coup-plotters get their way and stay in power? You think corruption will magically go away simply because the leaders are wearing khaki? That must be why the Nigerian government has recovered so much of Abacha's stolen loot abroad that he makes all civilian leaders before and after him look like a saint, or why $12 billion could simply disappear into thin air under Babangida's watch.

Anybody who supports this rank illegality is seriously stupid, especially if you happen to also be one of those simultaneously bleating about Peter Obi's "stolen mandate" [sic]. You cannot be complaining about alleged political irregularities in one country while cheering on the ultimate irregularity - sedition - in another, unless you have no moral principles whatsoever and are only motivated by a raw hunger for power at all costs.

007kjb:
Military reign is better than the current west African democracy

Only if you're the military man doing the reigning - or a tribalist so embittered by his candidate losing that he would rather see everyone else deprived of their choice as well.

Cromagnon:
He may be a criminal in the USA but not in Nigeria. So this is null and void

He isn't even a criminal in the USA, as the forfeiture was a civil matter, not a criminal one. This is a point which has already been made by the American government through official channels, and one anybody with even the slightest acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon legal traditions would understand. Sadly, most Obedients lack the brains to appreciate such differences, and the few who do simply don't care as long as they think pushing the lie can serve the purpose of propaganda.

If Obidients were serious about criminality as a matter of principle, they wouldn't be supporting a man who was caught breaking the law by illegally setting up offshore accounts in a tax haven under his daughter's name, in an international investigation conducted by over 140 news organizations in more than 100 countries (so the usual "Lagos-Ibadan media" bleatings don't apply).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_Papers

If they were half as outraged about criminal behavior as they pretend, why are they backing a man who indisputably broke Nigeria's own laws by refusing to use the funds allocated by his state legislators for the stated purposes they allocated it, preferring to park the monies in a bank in which he held an ownership share, whence he could skim the interest earned for himself? Why doesn't it bother them that the same man used more state money to prop up a family-owned beer business? These are the sorts of crimes (and they are most definitely crimes) of which Tinubu has been much accused but never had proven against him, yet all these fairweather enemies of criminality keep silent when it comes to Obi.

The nail on the coffin of all this hypocrisy is that the very people pushing baseless "drug baron" accusations are the same ones who hail drug traffickers who are convicted in Asia with chants of "na man you be" ...

franchasofficia:
The guy you ignorant people that cherish injustice and evil accused of being behind the Twitter handle have come out to debunk the dangerous lies against him and he even followed it with a very powerful prayer and curse on Kemi and his ignorant followers, go to that thread on fp or Twitter and say AMEN to his prayer since you so much believe in a mad woman always seeking for foolish attention like the other demented Reno Omokri

All I see in this word-salad of yours is a lot of name-calling bullsh*t. Who cares whether or not Kemi Olunloyo is a "mad woman"? How does that disprove what should be evident to anyone with a working brain and two eyes - that this Twitter account stole the Instagram photos of an entirely unaware American woman? This is something anyone with an Instagram account can easily verify, and all your rubbish about curses and whatnot fails to obscure the hard reality of fraud here.

A broken clock can be right twice a day, and whether or not Olunloyo and Omokri spout nonsense 99% of the time, on this particular occasion there is no need to take the word of either of them about the central accusation. If a lunatic living under a bridge says its raining and I can feel the drops landing on me, I have no right to say the lunatic is wrong on this particular occasion. All your name-calling does nothing to invalidate the accusations made here, but it does once again demonstrate what I said right from the start: being an "Obedient" seems to require one to lack any critical thinking skills and to be willing to resort to insults as a first and last substitute for reasoning.

princeemma69:
She and her supporters should say amen, if they think they he is lying. Least I forgot; that was how an RCCG pastor refused to take with the Bible at the Presidential election petition Tribunal

As if that would prove anything other than that some of you are extremely gullible and still believe in superstitious nonsense. Curses achieve absolutely nothing one way or another, but Henry Shield clearly understands how intellectually stunted his credulous followers are, which is why he is exploiting this flim-flam to deflect from accusations he has no reasonable defense against.

franchasofficia:
How does Firstladyship being a male Twitter handle disprove all the truths and exposures the handle have made about APC and its criminal candidate Bola Tinubu ?

I don't know about you, but I don't rush to put my trust in those who steal other people's photos to masquerade as someone else. Why should I believe someone capable of such brazen mendacity will tell the truth about anything else?

In any case, this is neither here nor there. The question at issue right now is whether Olunloyo is right about this "Firstladyship" character being a phony, and again you've slyly tried to sidestep the obvious conclusion by engaging in "whataboutism".

franchasofficia:
Says a demented mad woman who got deported from US, Canada and barred from entering US, Canada, EU countries, etc but manages to parade herself as a journalist to deceive her gullible followers always

Even if all of these accusations were true, how does this disprove any of the claims she has made? All you're doing is demonstrating that the allegation against you Obidients is true, namely that you are incapable of logical reasoning, and only know how to engage in threats and personal attacks.

That this "Firstladyship" person is a fraud who stole an innocent American woman's Instagram photos seems beyond an iota of doubt. I'm sure even you recognize as much, which is why you freely hurl insults at Olunloyo while gingerly avoiding the substance of what she's said.

This is a total waste of time by Obi and it reeks of desperation, seeing as the civil forfeiture never had a criminal law component to it. While this ridiculous gambit may play well to Obi's gallery of diehard followers, who will believe anything negative said about Tinubu out of tribal animus, no judge is going to give this argument even a moment of serious consideration.

I have to wonder what exactly Obi is hoping to get out of all this, given the reality that he came 3rd in the polls, not 2nd. Let us assume he and his tribal warriors get their fondest wish, and Tinubu is somehow disqualified: the end result would only be the appointment of Atiku, not an Obi presidency. Obi has offered absolutely zero evidence that he managed better than the 3rd place finish allotted to him, so what on earth is all this talk of a "mandate" based on, other than hot air and childish dreaming?

grandstar:
Well one might be surprised.

Omohayek, what is the likelihood of FDI will flood our shores soon?

The odds are certainly better than they were before Buhari stepped down, but there's still a long way to go before Nigeria is seen as an attractive destination. In the short term, the ongoing challenges to the election results need to be dealt with, after which there's the question of who will run the CBN, and who will be the finance minister. In the medium term, it remains to be seen what Tinubu plans to do about the bloated size of the government, what he will do about reducing the barriers to trade (e.g. import bans, extremely high tariffs, etc.), reforming the dysfunctional energy sector, handing over the air and seaports to deep-pocketed investors who know what they are doing, and taking serious steps to decentralizing the security architecture of the country - as in local police forces with real accountability to their populations, rather than just more special task forces or throwing more cash at the utterly discredited NPF.

Basically, what investors will want to see is whether Tinubu is committed to overhauling the Nigerian state for the long term, or whether he will be intimidated by the backlash from the subsidy abolition into taking only timid, uncontroversial steps going forward. Nigeria has a serious credibility problem abroad due to its long-standing history policy zig-zags and grand pronouncements without follow-through, so it is going to take a reasonable stretch of consistent implementation of reforms to convince investors that this time really is different. The silver lining here is that the steps Tinubu needs to take to win over foreign investors are the same ones he needs to unblock growth even without taking FDI into account.