₦airaland Forum

dayokanu: Only that we dont beg around to be attached by force to anyone

But this one that you are begging, threatening etc just to have SS attached to you?

What kind of parasite are you by the way

Duh! The last time I checked, there is NO SINGLE YORUBA TRIBE IN SS? Duh!
Why should you be interested in it?
Ondo is not SS! It may be in the so called "Niger delta", but definitely not in SS.
We have Igbo in SS.
What don't you understand? I tire for dis kain dumbness.

In fact I'm changing your name now to dayogoat!

dayokanu: This attache by force na wa oooo

Generation of leeches.

When will you eddiots mind your own region?
You exert influence into the same SS; why do you want to deny us our influence when we have CORE IGBO lands inside SS?
You lot are getting more and more idiotic everyday.

Beaf: It isn't about oil and of course, we need to be in good terms with our natural allies and neighbours.
Mutual respect and strong alliances are key.

Beaf, but seriously, how do you explain the fact that there is no SE/SS economic forum (never mind political forum)? Isn't it self evident that any economic development talks in SS should involve SE because of territorial intertwine(of tribes)?
I have thought about it and all I get is that something is amiss somewhere. I don't know who to blame because I don't have insider information. All I know is that current SS has a huge chunk of Igboland. So whatever happens there must be supported by the Igbo in SE. I don't see it any other way, because I know that Igbo has no ill intents on the rest of SS groups. So, it is no longer safe to assume that things are happening, when nothing may be happening, and I know the end of it would not be good for either zones.

manny4life: If they've had approval, what is holding them back at this point? I guess capital is the issue, anyway, on the comment you made "FG will be forced to tag it International status", IMO in as long as these airports meets the strict ICAO standards of certification in it's class, and I mean ALL aspects, then FG tagging it international is though important but not relevant.

Please can you explain the bolded more? I thought that FG holds the key to international airport classification.
Am I wrong with that assumption?

afam4eva: South-south economic summit sounds rather laughable and Musiwa reallly caught it in his post.



The eastern part of the south-south should be cooperating with the south-east while the western south-south should look westwards. It's 1diotic that there's something called south-south economic summit even when this people have nothing in between then except for oil.

I am even beginning to think that it is not oil, after all Cross river is not an oil producing state. So, it has to be something else. Well, whatever it is will not survive without Igbo support.

Mr. Globe:
lol. The same guy that accused peter obi in the intl airport thread of non performance is saying 'our governor dey try' how many mouths you get? Anyway, another press gimmick by peter obi. NOTHING is on ground. Nothing.

Dude don't misrepresent me or my drifts.
All I said is that ALL SE governors are not giving enough attention to the international airport issue, a project I consider very important and frontal to our long term survival strategy.
Yes he is trying, but so are Rochas of Imo and Chime of Enugu.
They are still too soft for my liking though. I need a militant governor who can go to Jona's house in Abuja and tell him to designate those airports as international.

As for Peter Obi, I would leave you with Dee Sam Mbakwe's quip, "O buru na Mbakwe Peter Obi agaghi achi, o bu nna gi ga achi?" hehe!

Capt.Barbosa:
Another Dr. Abalaka in the making?

So, why are powerful government officials trying to steal his dream company/project?
I am certain it is people like you that are dream killers in Nigeria.
One generation retires, another like you replaces it!

Chino nwanne can you please gist us more on this?
Is this thing real or is it a media stunt? Awa governor de try, but he needs to be bolder and more militant.
Anambra is a tough state to govern.

alj harem: the power thing makes me laugh.

today lagos would claim

tomorrow rivers

next week anambra. We all are still waiting for one of the states to do it !!! All this news is taking us no where

lol, was thinking just the same thing. None of them ever powered one house.
Make I de waka biko.

Stem cell technology is a very delicate and intricate technology. It takes years of disciplined work to make any headway (ie ethically).
This man has tried to pioneer this effort in Nigeria. Guess how Nigeria is responding.

I cry for him.

Like joke, like play now just watch.
Like Fela would say, "corner corner, passi passi, corner corner, passi passi. . ." before you know it, poof goes years of hard work, ingenius input and dreams!
This has happened countless times.
What baffles me is how people can actually take this forever.

[size=16pt]They want to hijack my Stem Cell project, Dr Iloegbunam cries out[/size]


In his Enugu office, the Group Chairman of Stem Cell Transplantation Project for Africa, Dr Perry Iloegbunam is always looking for ways to propagate Stem Cell therapy in Nigeria. For over 10 years, the Stem Cell project has been dear to his heart. But today, he is no longer a happy man.

Iloegbunam who is also the National Chairman (Technical) of the National Committee on the Research and Application of Stem Cell Transplantation Technology in Nigeria (NACRASTIN) is angry over the attitude of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology and National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) on his pet project, Stem Cell.

In this interview with Daily Sun in Enugu, he lamented that some officials of the ministry and NABDA wanted to hijack the Stem Cell project from him. Excerpts:
Move to hijack our Stem Cell project
It is unfortunate that what we have laboured for over the years has been hijacked. I am talking about the hijack by some officials of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology and National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) in collaboration with their business partners of our Nigeria Stem Cell project, which we have laboured for over 10 years.

We have in the past raised the alarm on this, but nothing had come out of the ministry towards resolving the matter, instead they are perfecting, consolidating their plans, and looking the other way as if no Stem Cell project ever existed in Nigeria.
What the ministry is doing is very embarrassing, shocking, heart-breaking and most unfortunate; that a people that laboured to attract this type of noble project for their country would be subjected to this type of extreme devastating, dehumanizing, and psychological trauma. Elsewhere people who had done this kind of service to their father land would be given honours and awards, but in our own case what we have got are jungle and gutter treatment.

Beginning the project
When we first introduced Stem Cell technology in 2001 in Nigeria, we did not only receive unwarranted attacks by the medical professionals in virtually all the teaching hospitals and health institutions we visited, but were also tongue lashed as if we were introducing poison. However, many of these people in recent times have apologized to us for their conducts and blamed what they did on ignorance.

I must confess that we went through difficulties of unimaginable magnitude and faced a lot of challenges to get the Nigeria Stem Cell project to where it stands today. We were even treated as out-casts in our own country. Some even described the entire Stem Cell presentation as an impossibility and, therefore, a 419 setup.

Our challenge now
Today, after 10 years in the saddle, some government officials ganged up with their business partners to hijack the project. We distributed Stem Cell books and other printed materials on the subject matter to most of the teaching hospitals and health institutions free; organized conferences, seminars and workshops free to all participants; and indeed funded all meetings and operations of the NACRASTIN without any financial input from neither the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology nor the National Biotechnology Development Agency or from anywhere else.

But after 10 years on the project, the initiative is at the verge of being taken away by some powerful individuals who are out to serve their own interest instead of that of the majority of Nigerians. They are now behaving as if the Stem Cell project is their own brain child and to worsen the matter they have also arranged for some businessmen to midwife their relationship with the payment company abroad.

The parallel committee that was set up by the ministry is with a clear script to undermine STEMCETA. If not, what is the justification for the new committee? What is the name of the new committee? Who are members of the new committee? When was the new committee inaugurated? Why did they mislead us into spending hundreds of millions of naira when they have a different secret agenda? Why is the NACRASTIN file declared missing by the ministry officials? Why did NABDA not make public (to date)the successful result of the Stem Cell pilot scheme which the agency requested for, witnessed and acknowledged all reports emanating from the process since 2006? What is the superiority of their new committee to the existing one? Above all, where is the spirit of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) the government has been propagating?

Is it a ploy to encourage and attract investors and businessmen only for them to be thrown overboard?
We think that Nigerians should be told of what went wrong with the National Committee on the Research and Application of Stem Cell Transplantation Technology in Nigeria (NACRASTIN), which they inaugurated. It is very regrettable that some government officials would use government machinery to trample upon others as if we are in a banana state.This is injustice, and the situation calls for a probe.

One of the directors in the National Biotechnology Development Agency on behalf of his partners, has been mounting pressure on Prof. Dr. E. M. Molnar, one of the members of our foreign partners each time he visited Nigeria, to circumvent STEMCETA. Their over-riding interest in this project and their pranks is no longer comforting to STEMCETA. This is a jungle approach to things and government machinery cannot be used as such by her officials.

Deceiving the minister
The honourable minister that inaugurated the NACRASTIN worked very hard to ensure the take-off of the project. Same is to be said of the minister after her, Dr. Al-Hassan BakoZaku. The third minister was very brief and the present one is very new and may have fallen victim of a hatchet plan. They may have misled and rail-roaded the new honourable minister into a web they have been creating for years now.

Importance of Stem Cell
The importance of Stem Cell technology in the 21st Century medicine cannot be over-emphasized. It is indeed a therapy that will dominate the medicine of the 21st century; a therapy that will reduce to the barest minimum diseases suffered by human beings; a therapy that would be used for the treatment of every human diseased organ; a therapy for the treatment of incurable and untreatable diseases. For selfish interest, some group of persons had being frustrating and playing down the take-off of this noble project just to position themselves for the hijack, else Nigerians must not benefit from the wonders of the 21st Century medicine.

The National Committee on the Research and Application of Stem Cell Transplantation Technology in Nigeria, NACRASTIN, was inaugurated on the 27th June, 2008 by the then Honourable Minister of Science and Technology, Chief Mrs. Grace Ekpiwhere as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative with the understanding that since it is a private sector initiative by Stem Cell Transplantation Centre for Africa (STEMCETA), the position of chairmanship of the technical committee be allotted to STEMCETA while the honourable minister of Science and Technology retains the overall chairmanship position.

The U-turn
Surprisingly, soon after the inauguration, instead of pursuing the noble templates and objectives of the Committee, which will lead to full domestication of the technology in Nigeria, some staff of the National Biotechnology Development Agency and Federal Ministry of Science and Technology decided to work against the committee for their own selfish end.
The domestication of the therapy would have made Nigeria a hub of Stem Cell technology in Africa, attracting patients from all over the African Continent as well as providing her own citizens with superior treatments for the diseases they suffer from.

Our request

We want the honourable minister of Science and Technology to thoroughly investigate this matter with a view to putting the Stem Cell project back on track and funded.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2012/apr/04/national-04-04-2012-016.html

I smell a rat somewhere.
OBJ would not leave this post without being forced out. Something is cooking somewhere.
I guess we just have to wait to see what happens next.

My hunch tells me that such projects would likely be by private-public partnership anyway.
So, let's get the approvals first and take it from there!

Here I stand.

debosky: It is a private investment simply because government funds were not used to build it - if you are unable to distinguish between ownership and investment, I can't help you.

It's like saying because the PTA built a lecture theatre and donated it to a school, but because it is owned by the school, the theatre isn't private investment.

There may be different types of private investment, but community funded projects are still private - i.e. not government funds.

When you fail at simple logic, you cannot be expected to make rational arguments at any point in time.

Okay dude, this is the last lesson I would give you, and then you must return to school.
The simple answer is YES, because the school remains a PUBLIC school(if the school were a private school, the story would be different of course). As long as the proceeds from the theater is not going to a private firm as profits from the investment, it remains a PUBLIC resource. No more, no less.

Don't change arguments like someone suffering from attention deficit syndrome - this discussion was about international airports correlating to international businesses, not local airports. Answering simply Yes or No, can you show a correlation between the international airport in Sokoto and 'international class business'? Can you make such correlation for Maiduguri, Minna or Katsina International Airports?

If you can't focus on a simple question but keep going off on wild tangents, how will anyone take your ramblings seriously?

Again, you are missing the point, and honestly I'm answering you here ONLY because I want the thread to continue for some days more. I never said that there MUST be a business need BEFORE a country decides to build an international airport anywhere, be it in Nigeria or abroad. Heck if a country is stoopid enough (or rich enough), she can build an international airport for the president's use alone. In Nigeria, the country (as a poor country) has been stoopid enough to build international airports for cities and regions with little or no need for them, or an economic sustainability potentials for them. That is why Nigeria is a backward country. All I'm really saying is that a wise country builds resources such as international airports to support the economy and expand the potentials within that economy. All the airports you listed were products of political rascality, economic irresponsibility and general squander-mania. BTW that is why I'm calling for the projects to be private investments. If they are, they would never happen if no one finds them profitable. I'm only doing this to avoid the usual Nigerian marginalization of my region.
I also won't want a project that is not self sustaining.
In my own case I advocate for airports in a sub region that has demonstrated enough vibrancy and economic potentials, to drag the dead wood country into the 21st century. That's all I'm saying.
Like my icon the great Ikemba would say, "Is that clear now?".

bittyend: This thread is still alive

Nwanne, biko kill this thread daalu.

The thread is alive and well because it address issues of concern affecting real people.
It will die when it has completed its natural course.
You cannot kill it, even if you try.

Why do I have this nagging feeling that this woman may snag this job?
Well, I am already very proud of her. Win or lose, she has made Nigeria proud.

[size=16pt]World Bank: NY Times picks Okonjo-Iweala over Obama’s choice[/size]

[b]THE influential New York Times, perhaps, has picked Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala over US President Barack Obama’s nominee for the World Bank presidency, Jim Yong Kim.

Comentators on the paper said: “Whereas Okonjo-Iweala has already attracted strong endorsements from publications at the cutting edge of global financial journalism like The Economist, and The Financial Times, this new endorsement enhances the profile of Okonjo Iweala.

Conventional qualities

The New York Times is unequivocal in its support saying as an “economist, diplomat and former World Bank managing director, she offers many conventional qualities of bank presidents” adding, “she breaks the mould as a woman from an African country where she fought to reduce the country’s debt, gain greater access to international credit markets and battle corruption.”

Advancing merit over politics, and given the current global economic and social challenges, Okonjo-Iweala, is the best fit for the presidency of the World Bank, the paper said, even as the influential newspaper praised Obama’s choice as an “inspired choice.”
[/b]
More importantly also, argues the paper, the tradition that allows all presidents of the World Bank to be American, just as the headship of the International Monetary Fund traditionally goes to Europeans is antiquated and needs be replaced by a merit-centred consideration.

The New York Times noted, however, that what the bank needed was “a president with experience beyond Washington’s narrow political and economic circles.” It posited that although “Dr. Kim has worked on development in the poorest countries, one major success: leading a World Health Organization initiative that provided access to H.I.V. treatment to millions of people, the new president must also tackle broader issues of economics and growth, and manage the prickly political leaders who are the bank’s overseers. That is why the bank board must take a serious look at Dr. Kim’s strongest challenger, Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister.”

The paper argued that nevertheless, a merit-based consideration should not exclude qualified Americans, the paper said, but even as much, “neither should it guarantee them a job” in a world where emerging economies contribute a significant share to global growth, and are “rightly demanding a greater say in decision-making.”

Global health expert

Yong Kim is a South Korean-born medical doctor and president of Ivy League Dartmouth College of whom the paper admits,“ has a stellar reputation as a global health expert.”

Of the third candidate, José Antonio Ocampo, a Professor at Columbia University in New York, and who is the former Colombian finance minister and high-ranking United Nations official, the paper said “he, too, is a credible contender with long experience in development and international policy.” However, with regards to Dr. Kim, the paper said: “The bank will almost certainly do well under his leadership. But it would do even better if the process for choosing the next president were truly competitive and fully transparent.”

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/04/world-bank-ny-times-picks-okonjo-iweala-over-obamas-choice/

Obiagu1: anyi ga agariri n'iru

O di nma nwanne! Anyi ga agariri n'iru!

Please note my real reply.

Sam_Ikenna: My own is - please Nigeria better not go into war with anyone, even if its Benin Republic. The reason is not because we're not strong enough to bully others but because we're as divided as anything divisible. Any huge outside adventure will end in disaster. [b]If we start as one nation at war we will pull out as 5 or 10 different countries, in fact you will be hearing different exit dates for different nations that went to war as one nation. [/b]I hope this message is quickly forwarded to Abuja.

My brother please don't kill me with laughter!

I know that a Biafran nation would be sending probes to Mars and maintain active space technology. We would be like Israel. We would be selling military technology to South Africa instead of them selling to us! If we had Biafra, these South Africans insulting us here won't be here. That I can assure you.

^^
Ol'boy you dey too much o.

noiseless: This SNIFFER PIG/JANJANWIID MURDERER won't you go and pray to "Allah to send you another otman/usama bin dan fool? This SNIFFER PIG/JANJANWIID MURDERER won't you go and pray to "Allah to send you another otman/usama bin dan fool?

pazienza: Eze,you are full of wisdom,but you can't influence much from america,we need igbo men like you as our political representatives in this country. The issues you raised on this thread were right on point,3 international airports is not too much to ask for,all we need from the government is to designate them as such, we once built a local airport,we can build an international one.

Thank you my brother.
Yes we can, and we must!

So, umu Igbo ibem , we need these airports to enable us grab our future by the throat!
These airports will give us almost every international business connection to move our land into the 21st century.
Understandably, some parts of Nigeria may lose our population as a result, but how long should we continue to allow our destiny to be stolen by destiny thieves?
Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe!

Yes, we can!

BTW ndu_chucks, e be like say your Igbo snitch don fear!

Tell him that this curse will stick with him until he repents and stops defeating the dreams and aspirations of his own people.

ndu_chucks: You, uncivilized baboon need to make up your mind whether you are serving Jesus or Okija shrine gods. You quote Psalm 144 on the one hand and express your belief in evil spirits. I weep for you mumu.

One thing I am sure of is that my Igbo will continue to improve whether you like it or not.

So, since when did a turbaned ISLAMIC EXTREMIST become Christian enough to understand the most basic law of Christianity?
The only Christian you love is one that is dead!